3 ms·
Big O notation doesn't come up explicitly in conversation often, but the principles come up constantly. You need a fundamental understanding of the time complex
by iEchoic 10y ago
Big O notation doesn't come up explicitly in conversation often, but the principles come up constantly. You need a fundamental understanding of the time complexity of algorithms to write good software of non-trivial complexity in most domains.
- dsacco 10y agoI don't understand why this sentiment gets downvoted so often. The commenter didn't express anything rudely, and it doesn't seem controversial. If you are writing software that is more complex than simply gluing libraries together; i.e. you have to think and plan the functionality out, then yes, the odds are that you will benefit from understanding time complexity at least once somewhere. I feel that saying things related to algorithms invokes an anger towards unreasonable whiteboard interviews these days. No one is claiming you need to memorize algorithm and data structure implementations from scratch (although, for basic things like queues and linked lists you should probably be capable of writing one, even if it requires referencing wikipedia briefly...). We're just saying that a solid understanding of time complexity is generally and broadly very helpful.