I learned to code as a kid and only met mathematicians who consider themselves programmers as an adult.
Some opinion, maybe unpopular:
Big O notation can be quite informally understood by normal people. It is academic people that make it and keep it challenging because it is how they understand the world. This is why interviews have stayed materially gruesome despite loud voices wishing it weren't so. It's the language of the people that rule this industry and you either learn it or leave. That said, we can change it too, if we want.
>Big O notation can be quite informally understood by normal people.
Right; the concept is easily understood. It is the rigor of deriving and proving that is made difficult by the mathematicians which need not be that way.
As an example, Here is a neat communication from Faraday to Maxwell on receiving one of Maxwell's paper;
“Maxwell sent this paper to Faraday, who replied: "I was at first almost frightened when I saw so much mathematical force made to bear upon the subject, and then wondered to see that the subject stood it so well." Faraday to Maxwell, March 25, 1857. Campbell, Life, p. 200.
In a later letter, Faraday elaborated:
I hang on to your words because they are to me weighty.... There is one thing I would be glad to ask you. When a mathematician engaged in investigating physical actions and results has arrived at his conclusions, may they not be expressed in common language as fully, clearly, and definitely as in mathematical formulae? If so, would it not be a great boon to such as I to express them so? translating them out of their hieroglyphics ... I have always found that you could convey to me a perfectly clear idea of your conclusions ... neither above nor below the truth, and so clear in character that I can think and work from them. [Faraday to Maxwell, November 13, 1857. Life, p. 206]”
I have met a lot of programmers that don't know about the concept nor do they proactively think to apply it.
I do understand the disconnect between knowing snobby language and doing good work. Certainly you can be an amazing programmer and apply these ideas possibly without ever even being trained on them or knowing the jargon.
In industry at least, a lot of work is communication so you have to know what things are commonly called to explain your thoughts to other people. and along those lines Mathematicians are the ones that are studying this concept in the abstract, so its useful to use their lingo because then you know where to find all the abstract knowledge on the subject.
Finally I'll say of all the obscure terminology for things intuitively applied, Big O has to be one of the most common, followed by gang of 4s design patterns.
> In industry at least, a lot of work is communication so you have to know what things are commonly called to explain your thoughts to other people. and along those lines Mathematicians are the ones that are studying this concept in the abstract, so its useful to use their lingo because then you know where to find all the abstract knowledge on the subject.
I think this is what I'm getting at. Mathematicians can adjust their language to communicate with a wider audience, especially on things as so commonly understood as Big O. It's a two way street, because you need to know and understand mathematical principles to be a good programmer, but if this is your only mode of understanding you are equally useless. There needs to be hiring gates for both.
Some opinion, maybe unpopular:
Big O notation can be quite informally understood by normal people. It is academic people that make it and keep it challenging because it is how they understand the world. This is why interviews have stayed materially gruesome despite loud voices wishing it weren't so. It's the language of the people that rule this industry and you either learn it or leave. That said, we can change it too, if we want.