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wall follower

   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, droid.