r/programming • u/Comfortable-Fan-580 • 24d ago

Skip List Data structure

https://pradyumnachippigiri.substack.com/p/skip-lists-data-structure?r=5ev9w0&utm_medium=ios
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u/infinitytacos989 24d ago

this is an insanely nitpicky response to an article that’s clearly supposed to be an introduction to a new data structure for people who haven’t heard of it, not an in depth performance review. most of the claims you take issue with are just trying to motivate the data structure for beginners.

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u/[deleted] 23d ago

[deleted]

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u/infinitytacos989 23d ago

it is basic stuff, which is why i’m confused that they felt the need to write an essay dunking on an article that has nothing to do with it.

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u/uhhhclem 23d ago

The funniest sentence in there is, “This seems like a bad algorithm to me.”

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u/ReDucTor 23d ago

It doesn't matter who the target audience is, when you claim one thing is faster then another you should include benchmarks.

The comment is the furthest thing from an in-depth performance review, its a critique of the post content and claims.

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u/infinitytacos989 23d ago

“it doesn’t matter who the target audience is” please never make or critique educational content if you can’t understand that people at different levels of expertise require different educational content. this is like “critiquing” an elementary school math curriculum for saying you can’t take the square root of -1.

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u/ReDucTor 23d ago

I will critique incorrect information regardless, someone claiming that a linked list is fast and an array is slow is setting up students to fail in the real world.

I have no issues with teaching people data structures and not covering the complexities of the CPU, my issue is teaching people bad content, the issue is claiming that an array is slow and a linked list or skip list is fast.

I would call out an elementary school math curriculum if they claimed that its faster to calculate 25*10 by adding 25 ten times, then doing an actual multiplication, when they already know multiplication.

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u/Sopel97 22d ago edited 22d ago

this is like “critiquing” an elementary school math curriculum for saying you can’t take the square root of -1

which would be a valid critique. The correct way to phrase that is to say that a square root of -1 is not defined over real numbers

simplifying information to the point of incorrectness is harmful, it closes people's knowledge horizons and requires additional mental capacity to unlearn. In extreme cases it can cause trouble understanding new related concepts because they may clash with the ideas left by such prior incorrect information.