Ask HN: Why is big O often used in CS when omega or theta should be used?

2•amichail•1y ago

Do most people not know about omega and theta or perhaps they intentionally misuse asymptotic notation?

Comments

adrianN•1y ago

Finding lower bounds is generally more difficult.

amichail•1y ago

People often use big O notation in all cases including for lower bounds.

adrianN•1y ago

BigO for lower bounds is plain wrong

numpad0•1y ago

Those aren't in the ASCII table.

compressedgas•1y ago

I've found some people on a well known QA site to be so strict with big-O notation that I don't use it anymore and instead only refer to constant, linear, quadratic time and so on. Even when O(1), O(n), O(n^2) would be actually easier to write even if they are technically wrong.

Objective – Tickets, file claims, and proof gates for coding agents

Show HN: Martin, A CLI that let's your Agent be your CRM, Built on Jaybase

Show HN: DashClaw

Why China's A.I. Models Could Threaten the Communist Party

Civilians under siege by Mexican cartel fight back with AK-47s, grenades

Do It 14,000 Times Slower with This One Trick

Hackers using calls, websites, meticulous tactics targeting US financial firms

Unlimited text chats with GPT-5.6 Luna for everyone

Design of 1 TWe Fusion Power Plant

Astronomers capture highest-resolution image ever of the Sun's surface

The Long Tail Gets Longer and Fatter

Designing a query system for a Rust compiler

Anthropic will design its own hardware to power Claude

Caveman Science Fiction

The original Quake gets a new DLC 30 years after its release

Some Moral and Technical Consequences of Automation (1960) [pdf]

Google Gemini seems to expose private Google Docs data

AI used to design new viruses

Should AI labs be treated like the owners of dangerous animals?

The End of Google Search—and the Internet—as We Know It

GitHub exposes pub keys at GitHub .com/${username}.keys

ASK HN: Opus 5.0 is more autonomous

Agent Skills

Gemma Translator: DIY hardware for offline translation

Win Grep – A visual 3-pane log and text filtering tool for Windows

AI Creates Bacteria-Killing Viruses: 'Extreme Caution' Warns Genome Pioneer

Anomaly

Show HN:Calibra: Train with Less Data

The Complexity We Choose

Kimi K3 is now available in GitHub Copilot