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I'm not saying it's impossible to code without knowing this stuff, just that it gives you an edge as it helps a lot when you have to deal with memory and speed

I'm not saying it's impossible to code without knowing this stuff, just that it gives you an edge as it helps a lot when you have to deal with memory and speed constraints. If you're coding UIs for web apps, you're probably not going to run into issues unless you're dealing with large collection or collections where the record sizes are big. If you're writing backend processes, mobile apps, games, embedded apps, graphics processing apps etc. knowing algorithms and data structures is important. Would you really want to work with an architect who had no understanding of algorithmic complexity, linked lists or hash tables? An architect needs to know how to design something that will scale to the data involved; I don't see how you can do that if you're ignorant about basic data structures and algorithms.

virtualized 9y ago
If a backend process is slow, you buy another server, install Hadoop or something and call the whole mess "big data". Mobile apps are known for taking ages to load and for taking too much space. They usually block on network requests and are eager to throw information away before blocking on a request to fetch the same information again. Embedded applications know what hardware they are running on, so they can waste all of the available resources. Extending them later is often very difficult due to that. In realtime graphics the required knowledge is very specific to realtime graphics. 101 algorithms won't help you at all. In non-realtime graphics, who cares? Let's spend this quarter's budget on a redesign of the progress bar so that we can have meetings and beautiful powerpoints.