A gentleman knows is someone who how to use big-O notation and doesn't. The only times I have used big-O in my career has been job interviews. It is my belief

A gentleman knows is someone who how to use big-O notation and doesn't. The only times I have used big-O in my career has been job interviews. It is my belief that it's mostly used to weed out people who didn't take computer science classes, and make them feel bad regardless of their real world skills. It's the same thing with database normalization. It has come up twice in my twenty year career. Once in an interview, and once during an acquisition when someone from the purchasing company was I believe trying to "Gotcha!" me. 3NF just doesn't come up in normal day to day work.