[jcalx]

This article and its associated HN comment section continue in the long tradition of Big O Notation explainers [0] and getting into a comment kerfuffle over the finer, technical points of such notation versus its practical usage [1]. The wheel turns...

[0] https://nedbatchelder.com/text/bigo.html

[1] https://nedbatchelder.com/blog/201711/toxic_experts.html

[dawnofdusk]

From what I read in the comments of the first post, the Pyon guy seems very toxic and pedantic, but the rebuttal by Ned isn't great. For example, nowhere in the rebuttal is the pedantic technical detail ever actually described. In fact the prose reads very awkwardly in order to circumlocute around describing it, just repeatedly naming it "particular detail". In my view, the author overreaches: he dismisses Pyon not only for the delivery of his criticism (which was toxic) but also the content of his criticism (why?).

Ultimately Ned is in the right about empathy and communication online. But as an educator it would have been nice to hear, even briefly, why he thought Pyon's point was unnecessarily technical and pedantic? Instead he just says "I've worked for decades and didn't know it". No one is too experienced to learn.

EDIT: I just skimmed the original comment section between Pyon and Ned and it seems that Ned is rather diplomatic and intellectually engages with Pyon's critique. Why is this level of analysis completely missing from the follow-up blogpost? I admit to not grasping the technical details or importance, personally, it would be nice to hear a summarized analysis...

[xenotux]

Such is the curse of blogging: when writing a series of posts, authors naturally assume that the readers are as engaged and as familiar with the previous discussion as they are.

In reality, even regular subscribers probably aren't, and if you're a random visitor years later, the whole thing may be impossible to parse.

[arp242]

> Why is this level of analysis completely missing from the follow-up blogpost

Because that's not what the article is about. It's not about whether Pyon was correct or wrong, it's that they were a dick about it. Their opening words were "you should be ashamed". They doubled and tripled down on their dickery later on.

And no matter how good your point is or how right you are: if you're a dick about it people will dislike you.

[the_af]

I think the lesson of those articles is not that people should stop trying to correct a misleading or incorrect explanation, but rather, that some people on the internet (like the "expert" described there) are more interested in picking and winning "fights" rather than gently helping the author correct his article. If you see Pyon's comments, he was very aggressive and very internet-troll-like.

The wrong take from this would be "... and therefore, technical details don't matter and it's ok to be inaccurate."

[the_af]

One caveat here is that the author of the article posted it here in HN for comments -- it's not that someone else did, and this is unfair because HN was never supposed to take a look, etc. They expected a review, otherwise they wouldn't have posted it here.

HN is not an audience of laypeople (mostly) and will critique the article with a different mindset than a novice that might be impressed by the visuals (which are impressive).

So I think the reaction is both to be expected and reasonable: HN will critique how correct the explanation is, and point out the mistakes. And there were a couple of fundamental mistakes due to the author not being a subject matter expert.

[frabonacci]

Good intro! I first learned Big O from Cracking the Coding Interview since many universities in Europe notoriously skip complexity notations even in basic programming classes. This definitely explains it in a much simpler way.

[monkeyelite]

This is why being able to read and write math is so important. All this confusion can be answered from a one sentence definition.

[0xbadcafebee]

Toxic expert here! I hate when blog posts try to teach complex subjects. It's almost always a non-expert doing the teaching, and they fail to do it accurately. This then causes 1) the entire internet repeating the inaccuracies, and 2) the readers make no attempt to do further learning than the blog post, reinforcing their ignorance.

I'll double down on my toxicity by saying I didn't like the page layout. As someone with ADHD (and a declining memory), I need to be led through formatting/sub-headings/bullets/colored sections/etc into each detail or it all blends together into a wall of text. The longer it takes to make a point (visually and conceptually), the more lost I am. I couldn't easily follow it. The Simple Wikipedia page was more straight to the point (https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_O_notation), but reading the "full" Wikipedia page thrusts you headlong into a lot of math, which to me signifies that this shit is more complex than it seems and simplifying it is probably a bad idea.

[xenotux]

> Toxic expert here! I hate when blog posts try to teach complex subjects. It's almost always a non-expert doing the teaching, and they fail to do it accurately. This then causes 1) the entire internet repeating the inaccuracies, and 2) the readers make no attempt to do further learning than the blog post, reinforcing their ignorance.

Ask yourself why. The usual answer is that top experts either can't be bothered to create better content, or they actively gatekeep, believing that their field must remain hard to learn and the riff-raff must be kept out.

I think the first step is to accept that laypeople can have legitimate interest in certain topics and deserve accessible content. The remedy to oversimplified explanations is to write something better - or begrudgingly accept the status quo and not put people down for attempts that don't meet your bar.

It's also good to ponder if the details we get worked up about actually matter. Outside the academia, approximately no one needs a precise, CS-theoretical definition of big-O notation. Practitioners use it in a looser sense.

[wy1981]

Writing is one of the best ways to learn something. Maybe non-experts learn something by writing about it?

Don't think the entire internet is repeating inaccuracies. :) I also believe there are readers that attempt to learn further than a blog. A blog post can inspire you to learn more about a topic, speaking from personal experience.

If there were no blog posts, maybe there would be no HN I believe.

There should be a place for non-experts. One could remain skeptical when they read blog posts without hating blog posts about complex topics written by non-expert.

[croes]

Most of the time inaccurate knowledge is better than no knowledge.

I bet you also have subjects where you use and spread inaccuracies unless you are universal expert

[bonoboTP]

You can't satisfy everyone.

My experience is the opposite. I hate the colorful books with many little boxes, pictures with captions in floaters, several different font sizes on the page, cute mascots etc, where even the order or reading is unclear.

Instead I found it much easier to learn from old books made before the 70s-80s, sometimes back into the 40s. It's single column, black on white, but the text is written by a real character and is far from dry. I had such a book on probability and it had a chapter on the philosophical interpretations of probability, which took the reader seriously, and not by heaping dry definitions but with an opinionated throughline through the history of it. I like that much better than the mealy mouthed, committee-written monstrosity that masks any passion for the subject. I'd rather take a half page definition or precise statement of a theorem where I have to check every word but I can then trust every word, over vague handwavy explanations. Often these modern books entirely withhold the formal definitions so you're left in a vague uneasy feeling where you kind of get it, have questions but can't find out "is it now this way, or that way, precisely?". And I'm not so sure that these irrelevant-cute-pics-everywhere books are really better for ADHD at the end of the day, as opposed to distraction free black on white paragraphs written by a single author with something to say.

[jpfromlondon]

It's an exercise most laymen undertake to reinforce newly acquired or partially acquired knowledge, and a valuable one.

Where it falls short is the usefulness to others.

[IOT_Apprentice]

Perhaps you could take the content and reformat it in a way that is better? I’d be interested in seeing your results. Thanks.

[AdieuToLogic]

> Toxic expert here!

I hate that this declaration is both hilarious and one many might suggest I need to prefix with regularly.

:-D

[jibal]

That second link is not about Big-O and is not something anyone should model.

[samwho]

Hehe, yes, Ned sent me a lovely email the other day about it. Happy to be doing my part.