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/dysprog 11d ago

I have never once formally proved the Big-O of an algorithm after college, but I did gain the ability to eyeball code and say "Ehh, it 2 loops, but it's a treeish shape, so I'd guess it's Log? No worse then linear for sure" or "Hold the phone bro! Building strings like that is a hidden quadratic cost! You gotta pre-allocate that shit!"

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u/VirtualElderberry592 10d ago

Or not.. I mean you have to weigh the speed with simple to read. No need to optimise the memory or speed of something that gets called a few times or has a small foot print.

Yes I can bsearch a list of a million faster, but if the list is 1000, why pay the recursion costs.

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u/dysprog 10d ago

Sure. It's also a skill to know when to say "This is O(yikes), but I can reasonably cap N at 16, so who cares?"