How to Rock an Algorithms Interview

Re:How to Rock an Algorithms Interview by mcantor on Monday September 26, 2011 @06:03PM (#3040929)

> And if not optimized "prematurely" (ie. written efficiently from the start), then after-the-fact optimization, if happens at all, would shave only a fraction out of the "forever" - thus it frequently doesn't happen at all because of such low projected ROI.

My personal experience completely contradicts what you're saying.

Despite the cushy comforts of server-side scripting languages, I have experienced the occasional performance or scalability problem, and in every single case, I wrote inefficient code on the first pass, discovered unacceptable slowness at a later date, then found the bottleneck and optimized it.

Perhaps I am a brilliant super-coder (unlikely), but I have never ignored a performance problem because I didn't think I could improve it enough to be worth the effort.

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Re:How to Rock an Algorithms Interview by VladRussian on Monday September 26, 2011 @06:31PM (#3041001)

man, i'm talking about complex systems (2G+ of source code for example) that are already well past several low-hanging-fruit passes, component- and system-wise. Their performance after that reflects the overall average emphasis on performance and skills of developers through the life of the project. And no amount of after-the-fact optimization would make Windows into Linux performance-wise.

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