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wall follower


wall follower: n. A person or algorithm that compensates for lack
   of sophistication or native stupidity by efficiently following some
   simple procedure shown to have been effective in the past.  Used of
   an algorithm, this is not necessarily pejorative; it recalls
   `Harvey Wallbanger', the winning robot in an early AI contest
   (named, of course, after the cocktail).  Harvey successfully solved
   mazes by keeping a `finger' on one wall and running till it came
   out the other end.  This was inelegant, but it was mathematically
   guaranteed to work on simply-connected mazes --- and, in fact,
   Harvey outperformed more sophisticated robots that tried to
   `learn' each maze by building an internal representation of it.
   Used of humans, the term *is* pejorative and implies an
   uncreative, bureaucratic, by-the-book mentality.  See also code
   grinder, droid.