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}; compare
{droid}.
[glossary]