Learning Big O Notation with Swift

Congratulations! As someone reading this series, you’re probably familiar with the basics of Swift/iOS Development and may be in the process of writing your next app. When building software, a question we often ask ourselves is what should be our definition of done. As an individual contributor working on a large project, features in your application may be determined by business stakeholders or a project lead. However, it takes more than requirements to build software users will love. Great systems combine detailed analysis, stellar features and performance.

As we start our journey understanding algorithms and data structures, an idea that unites each concept is the theme of Asymptotic Analysis. Often viewed as a complex topic, asymptotics is the process of describing the efficiency of algorithms as their input size grows. The notion of tracking algorithmic performance can reveal much about a solution’s effectiveness. Ironically, this area of study was primarily developed before the introduction of modern computing. Today, this provides an advantage when testing new ideas and communicating with other developers. In computer science, asymptotics is expressed in a standard format known as Big O Notation.

LINEAR TIME

Even though we sometimes think of algorithms as complex systems, in essence, they are merely recipes for…