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A visual introduction to big O notation

(samwho.dev)
688 points samwho | 2 comments | 24 Aug 25 07:39 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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ChicagoDave ◴[26 Aug 25 13:49 UTC] No.45026541[source]▶
I liked the presentation (right or wrong), but wanted to point out I’ve been in IT as a coder and architect for 40 years and never once needed to know big O notation.

Which I think is the complaint here. The article author might have made an effort to connect it’s significance to Internet solutions like Search.

I assume he didn’t because that’s already been done.

replies(2): >>45026762 #>>45028104 #
1. echelon ◴[26 Aug 25 14:04 UTC] No.45026762[source]▶
Every engineer should be familiar with at least the basics of computational complexity.

If you're stacking loops, you ought to know what that does.

You also really ought to also what your core data structures are, how they work under the hood, and how the different operations on them consume space and time.

If you don't familiarize yourself with at least those bare basics, you're doing yourself and your customers (and your future maintainers) a disservice.

replies(1): >>45030090 #
2. ChicagoDave ◴[26 Aug 25 18:01 UTC] No.45030090[source]▶
I’ve always done load tests, cured bad code, re-tested. Static analysis can discover most of these kinds of problems. It’s entirely possible I’ve been resolving big O problems intuitively over the years.