Comment by Certhas

Dynamic is definitely not meaningless. I am familiar with dynamic programming from the optimal control theory point of view, and it's squarely focused on dynamical systems. The central equation of dynamic programming is the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellmann equation, a generalization of the Hamilton-Jacobi equations of classical mechanics. And the terminology programming in this context also exists in linear programming and stochastic programming. It's definitely confusing today, but these terms simply predate the modern use of programming, as well as modern computers. I am honestly a bit puzzled by everyone in this comment section talking about recursion + memoization (as a way to efficiently implement backward induction I presume?). It seems like computer science teaches a particular application and implementation of dynamic programming ideas and people mistake that for the whole thing?