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Re:Career advice for young system programmers by the_only_law on Friday August 18, 2023 @05:52PM (#37182652)
> And how often do you hear people complaining that "interviewers only care about useless stuff like complexity" and "why wouldn't you be able to look up complexities if you really need them" (which only shows that you don't understand why complexity matters)?

Now how the fuck do you complain about something if you’ve never even heard of and “don’t know exists”. No one who’s never heard of algorithmic complexity or invariants aren’t going to complain about them because, perhaps to your amazement, they simply have no idea these things exist. But maybe that concept is a bit too complex for you.

Re:Career advice for young system programmers by bonzini on Friday August 18, 2023 @07:29PM (#37183523)
I don't know about you, but I have read both of those assertions way too many times, typically from people that have failed a job interview or from "influencers" ranting about how big O questions are gatekeeping

Stack Exchange, Quora, Reddit are all full of pages like https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/2083... (sometimes with a mocking tone).

Re:Career advice for young system programmers by the_only_law on Friday August 18, 2023 @07:32PM (#37183553)
Yes, I agree. I’ve seen these types of assertions quite a bit myself. However, for someone to write that question, they have to have known that Big-O exists. If they didn’t even know it existed, you wouldn’t see questions like this. Are you being disingenuous, or can you simply not read?

The initial assertion was:

> A self taught person doesn't even know that these things exist

Not “a self taught person doesn’t understand these things”, not “a self taught person doesn’t appreciate the usefulness or application of these things”, or whatever else you’re trying to argue.

Re:Career advice for young system programmers by bonzini on Saturday August 19, 2023 @01:45AM (#37185897)
Ok, just add "usually" after "a self taught person".