Z:gnu-www-ja-software-patents--9fd4e1-Then someone realized why don'/en

Then someone realized why don't I do the recalculation so that everything gets recalculated after the things it depends upon? This algorithm is known as topological sorting. The first reference to it I could find was in 1963. The patent covered several dozen different ways you could implement topological sorting but you wouldn't have found this patent by searching for spreadsheet. You couldn't have found it by searching for natural order or topological sort. It didn't have any of those terms in it. In fact, it was described as a method of compiling formulas into object code. When I first saw it, I thought it was the wrong patent.