The complexity tag has no wiki summary.
93
votes
16answers
7k views
“Never do in code what you can get the SQL server to do well for you” - Is this a recipe for a bad design?
It's an idea I've heard repeatedly in a handful of places. Some more or less acknowledging that once trying to solve a problem purely in SQL, you exceed a certain level of complexity you should indeed ...
59
votes
10answers
4k views
How to explain why multi-threading is difficult
I am a fairly good programmer, my boss is also a fairly good programmer. Though he seems to underestimate some tasks such as multi-threading and how difficult it can be (I find it very difficult for ...
45
votes
16answers
3k views
Is big-O really that relevant when working in industry?
In every interview I have been in, I have been quizzed on mathematical analysis of complexity, including big-O notation. My question is, how relevant is this test to development in industry? How often ...
32
votes
4answers
2k views
Can too much abstraction be bad?
As programmers I feel that our goal is to provide good abstractions on the given domain model and business logic. But where should this abstraction stop? How to make the trade-off between abstraction ...
18
votes
15answers
2k views
Is Object Oriented Programming a solution to complexity?
Do you think Object Oriented Programming is a solution to complexity. Why? This topic may be a bit controversial but my intentions to know the answer of Why from the experts here !
18
votes
8answers
1k views
Adding complexity to remove duplicate code
I have several classes that all inherit from a generic base class. The base class contains a collection of several objects of type T.
Each child class needs to be able to calculate interpolated ...
18
votes
3answers
281 views
Is there a correlation between complexity and reachability?
I've been studying cyclomatic complexity (McCabe) and reachability of software at uni recently. Today my lecturer said that there's no correlation between the two metrics, but is this really the case?
...
17
votes
14answers
872 views
Adding complexity by generalising: how far should you go?
Reference question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4303813/help-with-interview-question
The above question asked to solve a problem for an NxN matrix. While there was an easy solution, I gave a ...
17
votes
6answers
349 views
How does one rein in the complexities of web development?
I have been a server-side programmer for most of my career and have only recently started spending more time on web development. I am amazed at the number of things I need to master in order to write ...
14
votes
5answers
1k views
What would be the Impact of P=NP? [closed]
I am preparing for a test and I can't find a clear answer on the question: What would be the impact of proving that PTIME=NPTIME. I checked wikipedia and it just mentioned that it would have "profound ...
14
votes
8answers
390 views
When should complexity be removed?
Prematurely introducing complexity by implementing design patterns before they are needed is not good practice.
But if you follow all (or even most of) the SOLID principles and use common design ...
13
votes
7answers
2k views
What is O in Big O?
What is Big and O in Big O notation? I've read the definitions and it doesn't tell what is O pronounced as 'oh'. For example - I understand that O(n) is complexity of a linear algorithm where n could ...
12
votes
12answers
2k views
Is it possible to reach absolute zero bug state for large scale software?
I am talking about 20-30+ millions lines of code, software at the scale and complexity of Autodesk Maya for example.
If you freeze the development as long as it needs to be, can you actually fix all ...
12
votes
3answers
527 views
Do teams get more productive by adding more developers? [duplicate]
Suppose you've got a project that is running late. Is there any proof or argument that teams become much more productive by adding more people? I am looking for answers that can be supported by facts ...
11
votes
6answers
433 views
Guidance in naming awkward domain-specific objects?
I'm modeling a chemical system, and I'm having problems with naming my elements / items within an enum.
I'm not sure if I should use:
the atomic formula
the chemical name
an abbreviated chemical ...
