Complexity Theory Speed Comparison

Text on the meme

software engineer: linear is fast, quadratic is slow complexity theorist: P is fast, NP-hard is slow verification researcher: decidable is fast, undecidable is slow

What it means

A dark-mode social media post compares what “fast” and “slow” mean to a software engineer, a complexity theorist, and a verification researcher. The joke escalates from algorithmic complexity to computational decidability, where even decidable problems are considered fast and undecidable problems are slow. It is used as a reaction by computer science and theoretical computer science communities.

Objects

social media post / публикация в соцсети profile avatar / аватар профиля text block / текстовый блок dark interface / тёмный интерфейс mathematical notation / математическая запись complexity comparison / сравнение сложности