Have you guys ever encountered the time where you really have to optimize your algorithm? I'm thinking that of course, our algorithm has to be optimized every time we codes, but I'm just wondering on how is it in the real life? What kind of problems do you guys face with real life algorithm optimization problem? Just want to add some feeling of real life problems...

__________________

---

Oh, yes. Optimization can be extremely important. I once wrote a program which took a collection of ratings from users and converted those into recommendations. There were 100's of users, 1000's of ratings, and 1000's of videos (which they were rating). The process of creating a recommendation was so intensive that it caused the server to stop for a few hours while all the processing took place. Optimizing that code (by precaching certain results) reduced the work down quite a bit, but it ultimately had to be done on a separate box.

__________________
Jeremy Miller
Content Farmer - Optimized Automated Blog Posting

---

Can I know what was the Running Time of the algorithm that causes the server to stop for a few hours? Or, did you even bother to count it lol...?

__________________

---

Oh, I didn't calculate it. What happened is the client called me and asked me what the f**k I did to his server and told me that it had been running slow for hours. I killed the script and did some extra testing.

__________________
Jeremy Miller
Content Farmer - Optimized Automated Blog Posting

---

probably we won't even care with those and just go ahead and optimize it in the real world

My professor told me the one who really do cares with those equations are actually Algorithm researchers

__________________

---