[poorlyknit]

This attitude is how we get stuff like the GTA V O(n^2) JSON deserialization bug. I get it, nobody is implementing quicksort on a day-to-day basis, but being taught the ideas behind these algorithms is important for building mental models.

[ApolloFortyNine]

If the GTA bug was anything but just bad programming, it was a dev trying to implement their own JSON parser. It's said as much in the analysis that the JSON parser was simply poor, they could have just used any of the already existing JSON parsers.

And the other smaller problem was using a hash array instead of a hash map. You don't really need a mental model of multiple algorithms to know o(1) is faster than o(n).

The whole thing is more of a sign of how poor coding practices must have been at Rockstar for such a bug to not only make it in, but persist for years.