Another digression

Hopefully a brief digression...

 So, one of my most difficult computer programming projects was an automated version of Todd-Coxeter Coset Enumeration, written in Fortran in the mod 1970s.  The project took many months, mostly in the " design " phase, which was done using flowcharts, which I created a vast number of, and then the actual coding phase,  which " worked ", but I was never sure if it was complete and ended up " abandoned ", in my college math department office, and effectively --- lost ---.  It was coded on cards, about 450 , and so when the card deck was abandoned, then , the ability to reproduce it was mostly lost, although I did have " printouts ".  Now, after  20 + years in the computing field, I have unsuccessfully tried to reproduce it.  This is not a super big deal for me, because I have seen more - " modern " code, related to this, but the concepts involved are of course a bit subtle.

At the end of the day, what's so confusing about this is that , it was a yes-no sequence, which was quite complex, but it emulated a pretty unique kind of mental process, an algorithm actually. But right around this same time, mathematicians were able to determine, that the finite simple groups has a describable and and " provable " pattern.  

Anyway, for what it's worth, it something I still think about and perhaps, it will be worth while for me to explore, once again.

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