wall follower

n. 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.

