Singapore’s Prime Minister Actually Coded A C++ Sudoku-Solver

Leaders of countries have plenty on their plate to deal, such as dealing with the country’s economy, diplomatic relations, working out trade agreements, tending to matters at home such as reducing the rate of unemployment, and so on, so to find out that Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong actually found time to code, we have to say that we’re pretty impressed.

In a recent speech made by Lee, he was quoted as saying that there was a point in time when he managed to program a Sudoku-solver in C++. “The last programme I wrote was a Sudoku solver in C++ several years ago, so I’m out of date.” The comment was made when the Prime Minister admitted he was envious of the country’s Minister of the Smart Nation Programme Office, Vivian Balakrishnan, who has the time to code and tinker with robots.

The Prime Minister went on to state that one of his children lent him a book on programming with Haskell, something that he plans on undertaking upon his retirement. “My children are in IT, two of them – both graduated from MIT.  One of them browsed a book and said, “Here, read this”.  It said “Haskell – learn you a Haskell for great good”, and one day that will be my retirement reading.”

It’s nice to see a leader back up their talks about technology by actually dabbling in it themselves.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Computers
Tags: Education, Social Hit