Yes, that's what 90% of the comments on the article said, too. Welcome to the club. :P
He's talking about people's everyday understanding of data structures, including his own. That the data structure he described already existed when he banged it out is beside the point; most folks don't know about it, most CS programs don't teach it, and most software doesn't use it.
That's sort of like saying, "Well, all special relativity does is show Einstein's ignorance of Lorentz's work."
It's true in some sense, but ultimately an unproductive sentiment.
I think that knowing your audience goes a long way, particularly when using "You're doing it wrong" in the title.
The audience of this article was a lot of people that knew of the problem, and knew of research into cache-oblivouis algorithms. This is a long ways from not citing somebody, it's preaching to somebody as if they are ignorant when they're a fair ways ahead of you. Quite annoying when encountered.
I see his point, I'm not attacking that. I'm not happy about him didn't do enough research on the topic to find more recent results? Or talk with a real algorithms professor about this before writing up this entire article about this? One line could change those 90% of the comments, just one line about how "This kind of problem is tackled by the field of cache-oblivious data structures."
I really wish the theory and applied side split off into separate departments or divisions just like how math and applied math go their separate ways.
Cache-conscious data structures are more efficient than cache-oblivious data structures. While the latter are interesting from a research perspective, in practice the cache sizes are known and can be optimized for.
Would you use a cache-oblivious datastructure that's 10x slower than its regular counterpart? Cache sizes don't change every day, I don't see the point.
In general there are lots of datastructures that are wonderful on paper but whose constant time factors make them infeasible in practice.
He's talking about people's everyday understanding of data structures, including his own. That the data structure he described already existed when he banged it out is beside the point; most folks don't know about it, most CS programs don't teach it, and most software doesn't use it.
That's sort of like saying, "Well, all special relativity does is show Einstein's ignorance of Lorentz's work."
It's true in some sense, but ultimately an unproductive sentiment.