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I realize that you chose one example off the top of your head, but it seems like an incredibly rare case. The majority of developers can understand "Queries inv

I realize that you chose one example off the top of your head, but it seems like an incredibly rare case. The majority of developers can understand "Queries involving this column are slow, it needs an index". Slightly more sophisticated developers can use an EXPLAIN statement (or it's equivalent) to see how many rows are being scanned and apply indexes where necessary. How many hours of coursework is it worth to obtain the knowledge "finding things in a ordered tree data structure are way faster than scanning through the whole table"? I'm not sure if I've ever run into anyone who said "The things I learned in college have turned out to be pretty much worthless in my professional career. I wasted a lot of time learning irrelevant information." It's interesting that the majority of every CS education is always valuable, to every person, with no exceptions.

MichaelGG 12y ago
Eh, you'd be surprised by the number of devs that simply don't know what indexes are, other than magic-go-fast-juice. I've seen people put a separate index on every column, so that "it'd be fast for all queries"...without thinking that most of their queries used at least two predicates. I've seen people go on to spend tons of time and money on things that fundamentally cannot work because they simply are incapable of thinking through the complexity of what their asking. The fact that modern systems are so fast can let someone get pretty far before hitting a brick wall. OTOH, I'm not sure full coursework is needed for that. Just make your way through Sedgwick's algorithms book in a month or two and you're in the top 1% probably.
NDizzle 12y ago
Most places where I have worked, this is simply not the case. N in this case is somewhere between 100 and 300. Database indexing SPECIFICALLY is something that very few people grasp. Even Senior-Senior people.

MichaelGG 12y ago

Eh, you'd be surprised by the number of devs that simply don't know what indexes are, other than magic-go-fast-juice. I've seen people put a separate index on every column, so that "it'd be fast for all queries"...without thinking that most of their queries used at least two predicates. I've seen people go on to spend tons of time and money on things that fundamentally cannot work because they simply are incapable of thinking through the complexity of what their asking. The fact that modern systems are so fast can let someone get pretty far before hitting a brick wall. OTOH, I'm not sure full coursework is needed for that. Just make your way through Sedgwick's algorithms book in a month or two and you're in the top 1% probably.

NDizzle 12y ago

Most places where I have worked, this is simply not the case. N in this case is somewhere between 100 and 300. Database indexing SPECIFICALLY is something that very few people grasp. Even Senior-Senior people.