<s>[INST] So I took some code that someone else wrote for solving the Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP) and adapted it to work with my own data.  Now, when I run it, it takes forever (if I stopped it now, I'd estimate it's probably done around 0.001%).  It seems that the code was written for a much smaller problem (or the author was a lot more optimistic about the performance of their algorithm!).

Before I go about trying to optimize this, I should probably understand what the algorithm itself is doing.  To that end, I can provide you with the code - can you help me understand the algorithm if I do so?[/INST]