Comment by flowerthoughts

I was wanting to build a wire routing for a string of lights on a panel. Looked up TSP, and learned of Christofides herustic. Asked Claude to implement Christofides. Went on to do stuff I enjoy more than mapping Wikipedia pseudo code to runnable code.

Sure, it would be really bad if everyone just assumes that the current state of the art is the best it will ever be, so we stop using our brains. The thing is, I'm very unlikely to come up with a better approximation to TSP, so I might as well use my limited brain power to focus on domains where I do have a chance to make a difference.