4 ms·

How can anyone applying for a programming job not know Big-O notation? That's CS101. You pointed out exactly how someone would not know -- they may have never

How can anyone applying for a programming job not know Big-O notation? That's CS101. You pointed out exactly how someone would not know -- they may have never taken computer science classes and taught themselves programming. Or they may have taken some CS classes, not enough to have covered that particular concept. I'd guess that, especially for older programmers, anecdotally, it's not uncommon to not really understand or use it. I don't care if you're self-taught, it's audacious to even call yourself a programmer if you don't know the very basics of algorithms and data structures. Just because someone doesn't use the same terminology to describe a set of concepts doesn't mean they don't understand those concepts. Also, I wasn't aware there were were formal qualifications for someone adopting the title of "Programmer", pretty sure big-O notation isn't part of the dictionary definition.

ivanhoe 10y ago
But still you had to hear about it sometimes, somewhere, it's mentioned in pretty much any serious text on algorithms. Thing is that many people see it mentioned, but never bother to stop & learn what it's all about... and that's telling something about their approach to programming (and life) in general.
- binarycrusader 10y ago
  Sorry, but, it doesn't tell you anything. The world of computers is full of things to learn about, more than almost any one person could learn in a lifetime. People usually learn about what interests them, or what they need to know. It's entirely possible to be an accomplished programmer and never really learn big-O notation just as some programmers never learn assembly or C. Think about it differently, big-O wasn't widely discussed or well known until the 1970s, thanks to Donald Knuth who popularized it. Then consider that many programmers who learned programming may have done so before it was widely known and some may have learned programming from those same people. Are those programmers from roughly 1980 and earlier any less a programmer because they weren't aware of or didn't use big-O notation? Of course not. Is big-O notation something most programmers should consider learning? Yes. But we should not seek to exclude others from a profession simply because they don't meet arbitrary criteria we think is necessary when they are clearly already actively engaged in that profession.

ivanhoe 10y ago

But still you had to hear about it sometimes, somewhere, it's mentioned in pretty much any serious text on algorithms. Thing is that many people see it mentioned, but never bother to stop & learn what it's all about... and that's telling something about their approach to programming (and life) in general.

binarycrusader 10y ago
Sorry, but, it doesn't tell you anything. The world of computers is full of things to learn about, more than almost any one person could learn in a lifetime. People usually learn about what interests them, or what they need to know. It's entirely possible to be an accomplished programmer and never really learn big-O notation just as some programmers never learn assembly or C. Think about it differently, big-O wasn't widely discussed or well known until the 1970s, thanks to Donald Knuth who popularized it. Then consider that many programmers who learned programming may have done so before it was widely known and some may have learned programming from those same people. Are those programmers from roughly 1980 and earlier any less a programmer because they weren't aware of or didn't use big-O notation? Of course not. Is big-O notation something most programmers should consider learning? Yes. But we should not seek to exclude others from a profession simply because they don't meet arbitrary criteria we think is necessary when they are clearly already actively engaged in that profession.