PM Lee Hsien Loong reveals he is secretly a coding nerd who knows programming language C++

Did you read PM's FB post? We lost him at C++.

Martino Tan| May 04, 06:32 PM

In Prime Minister's Founders Forum Smart Nation speech on April 20, 2015, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong revealed his secret love for coding.

The last computer programme he wrote was a Sudoku solver, written in C++ several years ago:

“The Smart Nation Programme Office lives in the Prime Minister’s department. I take a personal interest in this. 40 years ago, after doing a math degree, I went on to study computer science, on my father’s advice. He said there is a future in that, and he was right.

So for the Smart Nation Programme Office, I have put Minister Vivian Balakrishnan in charge, reporting to me. Vivian is both a hacker and a dabbler -- He used to be an eye surgeon but since he does not get to operate on eyes nowadays, he dabbles in building simple robots, assembling watches, wireless devices and programming apps. His day job is to be the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, and so when he builds apps, he uses the real time APIs generated by the Ministry. That’s called user-testing.

I used to enjoy this; it is a long time since I’ve done anything. The last programme I wrote was a Sudoku solver in C++ several years ago, so I’m out of date. 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.” Full transcript of speech here

In his latest FB post, PM Lee has now made the source code available to all and sundry.

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told the Founders Forum two weeks ago that the last computer program I wrote was a Sudoku solver, written in C++...

Posted by Lee Hsien Loong on Monday, May 4, 2015

 

We pity the poor person in charge of the Sudoku Plus in the TODAY newspaper.

TODAY_Sudoku

PM's Sudoku solver may have solved TODAY's restructuring problem.

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