P versus NP – An early encounter

My first programming experience was in the early 80’s. I had bought myself a Texas instruments 58-c programmable calculator, and I was curious what could be done with such a device. That turned out to be very modest.
The calculator was capable of 480 program steps but held then zero memories for data storage. Each memory used for data consumed 8 program steps, so with the storage of e.g. 10 integers, the programming space was diminished with 80 steps.
The 58-c’s memory was retained even after switching off the calculator, but before creating another program, memory first had to be erased. Continue reading →