Fwiw theoretical computer scientists do this kind of analysis as well, while the post makes it sound like they don't. The equal-cost model of RAM operations is

Fwiw theoretical computer scientists do this kind of analysis as well, while the post makes it sound like they don't. The equal-cost model of RAM operations is only one model used in asymptotic algorithm analysis, and there are other cost models with other properties. The introduction of this paper gives a decent concise overview of some of them: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rwh/papers/iolambda/short.pdf http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rwh/papers/iolambda/short.pdf