I caught an article today on raywenderlich.com that pointed me to the Swift Algorithm Club. I had heard of the Swift Algorithm Club a couple times in the past, but never got the chance to take a peak. Today, I got that chance, and what I saw was really cool. Algorithms classes during my education were some of the most challenging, yet fulfilling classes that I took. Being able to dissect or create a complicated algorithm is a unique feeling. Something that I don’t think I’ve flexed enough since being out of school.
Big Oh
I really like how the Swift Algorithm Club has frequent references to Big-Oh notation, eg O(n). In particular, it’s so easy to get caught up in the high level APIs that we are often using when building our iOS apps, that it’s easy to lose focus on the basics of algorithm effectiveness and efficiency. Being able to spot an optimization to move from quadratic (O(n^2)) to linear (O(n) to even constant (O(1)) efficiency can have vast performance improvements in everything from network usage, to battery usage, to simple responsiveness of your app. One drawback, is that with the ease of learning how to “code iPhone apps” from the vast amount of tutorials out there, often these course cover nothing about algorithmic efficiency. So if all this is new to you, go do some Googling. Here’s a recorded course from MIT.
Go Contribute
I also appreciate how the article also puts an offer out recruiting contributors. I think for newcomers to the field, finding a project to be able to contribute to, or even just know how to contribute, can be daunting. It was nice that the article made some pointers on how to get started.
Wrap Up
Open source, and algorithms, how can you get any better? The Swift Algorithm Club is awesome. Take a look, and I’d love to know, do you consider Big-Oh efficiency when building your apps?
Happy cleaning.