Note for numberphiles: all numbers have been rounded to their first significant digit, because I’m a fan of Rob Eastaway’s “zequals” method of getting to the point when it comes to estimation. It’s much more valuable to walk away with the heuristic “some dude got a 300x memory reduction by swapping out a database he hacked together for a tiny, static, specialized data structure that does exactly what he needs it to and no more.”
  • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
    3·
    14 days ago

    Yup, that basically sums it up. The key part though was that doing the inefficient thing first allowed them to make progress and to understand the problem better by working through it, which later led to a more clever solution. The moral of the story here is that it’s always better to solve the problem even if your solution isn’t optimal, and then reflect on it.