[tnecniv]

Because evaluating algorithms is not always that straight forward. For some algorithms runtime is hugely important, and I don't mean the asymptotic complexity but a hard benchmark of how much it can do in what time span. Stuff like a SLAM algorithm being O(n^2) is nice and all, but to compare it to other SLAM algorithms, I need hard numbers on what it can do in how many milliseconds.

Often, I find that authors don't publish their code. If they do publish their code, they rarely publish their code for their benchmarks.

[sidarape]

Yeah sure but at that point, it's more optimization than algorithm design. Of course, with any algorithm, you always have the hidden constant that you must account for. Also, what I was saying does not apply to the entier CS field. It only applies when you try to design an algorithm for a problem that does not yet have an efficient algorithm. I don't have much experience but I don't think it is really hard to see the cost of the hidden constant in most algorithms.