Re:Brushing up on Computer Science Part 1, Big O
by amalcon on Monday March 14, 2011 @01:41PM
(#2323501)
It blew my mind the first time I read the proof that comparison sorts could never perform better than O(n log n) time worst or average-case.
It blew my mind the first time I realized that big-oh notation could be applied to any constrained resource (memory, disk I/O operations, bandwidth, everything) and not just CPU time.
It blew my mind when I realized that malloc and free, of all things, are not typically O(1) operations.
If you're doing anything even remotely interesting in computer programming, you'll benefit enormously from knowing about Big-O.
It blew my mind the first time I realized that big-oh notation could be applied to any constrained resource (memory, disk I/O operations, bandwidth, everything) and not just CPU time.
It blew my mind when I realized that malloc and free, of all things, are not typically O(1) operations.
If you're doing anything even remotely interesting in computer programming, you'll benefit enormously from knowing about Big-O.