alt Hacker News> Sometimes the best optimization is not a clever algorithm. Sometimes it is just changing the shape of the data.
This is basically Rob Pike's Rule 5: If you've chosen the right data structures and organized things well, the algorithms will almost always be self-evident.(https://users.ece.utexas.edu/~adnan/pike.html)
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jeswin • today at 4:54 AM
I wouldn't give too much credit to rules like this. Data structures are often created with an approach in mind. You can't design a data structure without knowing how you will use it.
If anything it's the other way round, if you're not talking about business domain modeling (where data structures first is a valid approach).
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Full agree on this.
I (deep, deep in embedded systems) have seen this too often, that code is incredibly complex and impossible to reason around because it needs to reach into some data structure multiple times from different angles to answer what should be rather simple questions about next step to take.
Fix that structure, and the code simplifies automagically.