4 ms·
Ironically, big-O describes things that are very easy to understand, in a notation that looks complicated. If you have a lot of experience, you probably alread
by Practicality 10y ago
Ironically, big-O describes things that are very easy to understand, in a notation that looks complicated.
If you have a lot of experience, you probably already understand the concepts. The notation just gives a clear way to describe them: https://rob-bell.net/2009/06/a-beginners-guide-to-big-o-notation/ https://rob-bell.net/2009/06/a-beginners-guide-to-big-o-nota...,
- chris11 10y agoTrue, but studying the theory gives a better intuition for big-O. And theory is helpful for some of the edge cases that can be more complicated. For instance, I wouldn't want to try to determine the run-time of a recursive algorithm with just the info in that article.
- Practicality 10y agoIndeed, and if you did learn these things through experience, as I supposed, then you probably did so by writing something O(2^n) and suffering when you had to process >100,000 records. (Why does it take 100 ms for 10,000 records and 50 minutes for 100,000? ... hmm) Learning these concepts through the theory is definitely more efficient.