Comment by dahart
1 day ago
I’m sure exponential is what parent meant, but geometric (edit: polynomial) is what actually happens, not exponential. Code complexity increases linearly when it doesn’t interact with other features, and geometrically when it does. In the worst case, complexity increases as the square of lines of code. That is still very, very bad, but it’s not exponential.
What's the difference? From what I'm reading online geometric is just the discrete version of exponential
No difference, you’re right. I meant polynomial not geometric. :P
geometric/polynomial: x^2, x^3, etc
exponential: 2^x, 3^x, etc
Everything in the second group eventually grows faster than everything in the first group, no matter how small and big you make the fixed numbers, so they are two different classes.
Geometric is exponential; I goofed above. Geometric and exponential are sometimes used interchangeably, but sometimes people use geometric to refer to discrete intervals and exponential to refer to continuous functions.
“Square of the lines of code”
Sounds exponential
That’s quadratic, not exponential. 2^n != n^2
2 is an exponent but exponential growth means the exponent grows. 2 does not grow, it's always between 1 and 3 (unless you use an AI to do maths).
And that's why sw eng interviews often have some basic math sprinkled in.