We do the smallest thing possible and get it out as quickly as possible.

We check in our code at the entry point of a pipeline, version control (Git and Github in our case), and then it’s taken through a series of steps aimed at assuring quality and lowering risk of releases. Automation helps us keep these steps out of our way while maintaining control through fast feedback loops (context-switching is our enemy). If any step of the pipeline breaks (or fails) we want to be alerted in our communication channel of choice (in our case Slack), and it needs to happen as quickly as possible while we’re in the right context.

So what's our total time cost? O(nlog⁡2n)O(n\log_{2}{n})O(nlog2​n). The log⁡2n\log_{2}{n}log2​n comes from the number of times we have to cut nnn in half to get down to sublists of just 1 element (our base case). The additional nnn comes from the time cost of merging all nnn items together each time we merge two sorted sublists.

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