The 112th edition of the Tour de France starts this weekend. La Grand Boucle is the biggest deal in cycling by a considerable margin, which means that a mass audience of non-enthusiasts will tune in for their first and only taste of road racing of the year, watch the beautiful scenery fly for five-plus hours, and shrug their shoulders, not quite having understood the appeal.
It seems simple. One rider crosses the line before the others. I'm somewhat sympathetic to the skeptic's position here, not because it is correct, but rather because the visual and technical language of cycling is remarkably distinct from every other major sport. Cycling is a nested suite of sophisticated maneuvers masquerading as a straightforward fitness contest. The Tour de France, more than any other race, typifies this.
Software internally is mostly pipes connected to other pipes, each adding a specific quality to whatever passes through it. If you have nice standards for what you send through the pipes, you can do more of what you imagine. This is called orthogonality. Factoring is when you notice a repeating pattern, and give it a name, and a set of things you can do to it, those would be names of pipes. I have to ask ChatGPT what it thinks about this, but I am also asking my human friends. BTW I expect this seems so natural because our minds probably work that way too, internally, below our conscious awareness.
