> Rule 3. Fancy algorithms are slow when n is small, and n is usually small. Fancy algorithms have big constants. Until you know that n is frequently going to be big, don't get fancy. (Even if n does get big, use Rule 2 first.) For example, binary trees are always faster than splay trees for workaday problems.<p>-- Rob Pike, Notes on Programming in C, 1989[0]<p>Generally speaking, I feel that the bureaucracy involved in a programming project should be proportional to the scale of the project itself. If the 'getting started' tutorial for your programming language demands that I choose a package name for my Hello World program, you fucked up.<p>[0] <a href="https://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/pikestyle" rel="nofollow">https://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/pikestyle</a>
Recently I went on a trip with a group. Lots of videos and drone footage. Gigabytes of data. The group leader got a 100GB Google Drive space. But if I upload my stuff into it, my stuff doesn't take his 100 GB, but counts against my quota, unless I modify the files to say that $GROUP_LEADER now owns those files.<p>Well, whatever. I try to download his videos from the web UI. Select all files in directory, wait about 20 seconds, download zip, wait another 20 seconds, finally the file download dialog shows up. It gives me a 2.3GB zip file. I open it, it's just a few files and not the complete directory. It doesn't give me the contents of the whole directory, just files until it reaches 2.3GB, and then silently fails.<p>Great jaaab, Google!
For those who were too young in 2012, here is some background: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29082014">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29082014</a>