Comment by globnomulous

Comment by globnomulous 6 months ago

6 replies

Apparently a simplex is a concept in geometry. I'm guessing this is the intended meaning of the term in the name. When most decently well informed, native speakers of English hear "simplex," though, they are likely to hear "herpes simplex" and so are likely to wonder, as I did, whether, or why, the program is named after a sexually transmitted disease.

gashmol 6 months ago

I thought it's related to the simplex method in linear programming

  • TeMPOraL 6 months ago

    Which IIRC is named for that geometry thingie GP mentioned, that this method uses to represent the problem, with the solutions being vertices/edges of the thingie.

  • globnomulous 6 months ago

    Interesting, TIL herpes is top of mind for me, but not for most of HN.

TypingOutBugs 6 months ago

If you gave me the chance to come up with 500 things related to simplex, herpes would not be there.