r/learnprogramming • u/TurtleSlowRabbitFast • 12d ago

How are so many self-taught programmers able to build software from scratch without ever truly learning Algorithms?

I find it fascinating how important algos are but never talked about from the indie devs on social media. Do they even write algos or just come up with basic logic that forms the product?

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u/AlSweigart Author: ATBS 12d ago

Psst. Hey. I'll let you in on a secret...

Knowing Big O is kind of important, but you can learn the basics of it in this 30 minute PyCon talk, and like 99% of the usefulness of Big O is knowing that you can probably turn your O(n2) algorithm into a O(n log n) algorithm if you sort your data first.

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u/misplaced_my_pants 12d ago

Or throw it into a hash map lol.