(02/08/2012 04:44 AM)Tetris999 Wrote:  Now that I look back on this stuff, I would've rather have learnt these things after I actually programmed.

Please tell me you're taking courses in a strange order, rather than it being the norm in your uni - because that would be totally retarded.

I don't really see the point of learning the stuff early.

Really, when you're doing your very first programming course, and you barely know how to write code, I think there are way more important things to focus on than learning how to calculate time complexities.  Besides, your level of code is most likely basic enough that any inefficient code can usually be spotted by looking at it, and going, "this looks dumb".  Even if you can determine that your code sucks by analyzing it's time complexity, you probably aren't good enough to improve it.

That stuff only really becomes truly relevant when you get deeper and start thinking about data structures, efficient algorithms and stuff like search strategies.



And learning this stuff before learning how to program is like learning statistical distributions before probability theory.


Well, I guess it's not very difficult nor time consuming to learn, so whatever.

(This post was last modified: 09/08/2012 10:56 AM by Assassinator.)

Interestingly enough, I was looking at some MIT courses and they do all sorts of complexity analysis on first year courses.  One would think it's overload, then again, it's MIT...

(09/08/2012 07:50 AM)Assassinator Wrote:  

(02/08/2012 04:44 AM)Tetris999 Wrote:  Now that I look back on this stuff, I would've rather have learnt these things after I actually programmed.

Please tell me you're taking courses in a strange order, rather than it being the norm in your uni - because that would be totally retarded.

That's the normal order, but to be honest, it's probably the most I've gotten out of university since all code-monkey related stuff are pursued in my own time.