Ask HN: How much of your time is spent on classical algorithmic problems?

75 points

13 years ago

Almost none of the time my team and I spend writing code is spent focussed on solving "classical algorithmic problems" - search / sort / comparison etc. It is all writing clear logic.

Our efforts are all around writing unambiguous code which does what it says on the tin (and says on the tin what it does). Code which other programmers can easily work with and code which interacts defensively with the rest of the system and only affects that which its told to.

I'm interested in how representative that is. How many of you have programming jobs which are genuinely algorithmically driven?

What fraction of your time is spent on "classical algorithmic problems"?

61 comments