---
title: "Computers are fast"
url: https://perrotta.dev/2022/03/computers-are-fast/
last_updated: 2025-09-05
---


[Computers are fast](https://computers-are-fast.github.io).

> Let's find out how well you know computers! All of these programs have a variable NUMBER in them. Your mission: guess how big NUMBER needs to get before the program takes 1 second to run.
>
> You don't need to guess exactly: they're all between 1 and a billion. Just try to guess the right order of magnitude!

This is basically an interactive version of [Latency Numbers Every Programmer Should Know](https://gist.github.com/jboner/2841832), originally coined by Jeff Dean.