Both Uses of

algorithm
in
Outliers

During the oral exams for his PhD, he made up a particularly complicated algorithm on the fly that, as one of his many admirers has written, "so stunned his examiners [that] one of them later compared the experience to 'Jesus confounding his elders/ " Working in collaboration with a small group of programmers, Joy took on the task of rewriting U N I X, which was a software system developed by AT&T for mainframe computers.†
Chpt 2

algorithm = precise instructions specifying how to solve some problem

Lennon and McCartney had a musical gift of the sort that comes along once in a generation, and Bill Joy, let us not forget, had a mind so quick that he was able to make up a complicated algorithm on the fly that left his professors in awe.†
Chpt 2 *