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Schlemiel the painter termsaying

algorithm that gets slower as it does more work due to repeated traversal

Joel Spolsky popularized. Schlemiel paints further from his bucket each day because he keeps walking back instead of moving the bucket. Classic example: strcat in a loop, O(n²). Comes up in code review.

aliases: Shlemiel the painter

topics: performance

references:

• Joel Spolsky — Back to Basics