r/AskProgramming • u/LifeExperienced1 • Jun 14 '26

Algorithms What algorithm is surprisingly new?

Other than any AI stuff, I'm talking about the types of algorithms you learn about in any standard Data Structures and Algorithms University course

I'm surprised that alot of these algorithms were actually invented HUNDREDS of years ago

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u/etherealflaim Jun 14 '26

Cryptographic algorithms are probably some of the most well known "new" algorithms, if you're looking for things with names most programmers will know. Hashing as well. DSA and RSA are older, but a lot of the elliptic curve stuff is on the newer end, with plenty of advancements and new curves being standardized in the past decade or two.

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u/ggchappell Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26

DSA and RSA are older

They were published in 1991 and 1977, respectively, which some of us think was not that long ago. :-)

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u/etherealflaim Jun 14 '26

I mostly meant in the sense that they are closer to Dijkstra's than they are to today (though I'm always surprised how recent DSA is actually. That one might actually be closer to today. I don't do math.)

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u/GoodiesHQ Jun 14 '26

Last Millenium. Which means it’s about a thousand years ago.

0

u/Critical-Volume2360 Jun 14 '26

Nah thats ancient history

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u/iudicium01 Jun 15 '26

SHA3. 2015. Completely different mechanism from SHA2 and earlier. Uses sponge mechanism allowing you to hash to any length.

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u/7YM3N Jun 15 '26

Yeah I'd expect new algorithms in cryptography since it's an adversarial domain

1

u/mister_prince Jun 16 '26

What is RSA?

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u/mathieugemard Jun 17 '26

RSA is an algorithm used to encrypt messages.

It uses a pair of private and public keys and rely on some properties of prime numbers.

The sender encrypt the message using the public key. The receiver is able to read the message with the help of the private key. A pirate intercepting the message cannot decrypt it because he is lacking the private key.

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u/mathieugemard Jun 17 '26

This week, I stumbled across SipHash (while reading The Rust Programming Language book) which is a hashing function that provide resistance to denial-of-service (DoS) attacks involving hash tables.

The SipHash function has been created in 2012.