Alternatively: do you know how much your computer could do in a second, but isn't, because the majority of software is so full of inefficiency?
In my experience, this is something that a lot of developers don't really comprehend. Many of them will have some idea about theoretical time complexity, but then see nothing wrong with what should be a very trivial operation taking several seconds of CPU time on a modern computer. One of the things I like to do is tell them that such a period of time corresponds to several billion instructions, and then ask them to justify what it is about that operation that needs that amount of instructions. Another thing is to show them some demoscene productions.
I got a few of these questions wrong because I don't use Python, but I could probably say with reasonable confidence how fast these operations could be.
In my experience, this is something that a lot of developers don't really comprehend. Many of them will have some idea about theoretical time complexity, but then see nothing wrong with what should be a very trivial operation taking several seconds of CPU time on a modern computer. One of the things I like to do is tell them that such a period of time corresponds to several billion instructions, and then ask them to justify what it is about that operation that needs that amount of instructions. Another thing is to show them some demoscene productions.
I got a few of these questions wrong because I don't use Python, but I could probably say with reasonable confidence how fast these operations could be.
Related articles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law
http://hallicino.hubpages.com/hub/_86_Mac_Plus_Vs_07_AMD_Dua... (I know title is a BuzzFeed-ism, but this article came from before that era.)