here are a subset of algorithms and data structures that are very common, well-studied and very helpful. Examples of these are Topological sort, quicksort, depth-first search; on the other hand, dictionaries, trees, linked-lists and to a lesser extent red-black trees, and tries, are examples of the latter.
However, there are other algorithms and DS that are not mainstream (not easily found in books) that we have learned on our own, have become a useful tool, and we are proud of using because they were hidden... maybe we found it in a dark paper from the dawn of computation in the 60s and it is still useful today, or we just made them up (why not?). My pet one is binary decision diagrams (BDDs). What is yours?![]()
However, there are other algorithms and DS that are not mainstream (not easily found in books) that we have learned on our own, have become a useful tool, and we are proud of using because they were hidden... maybe we found it in a dark paper from the dawn of computation in the 60s and it is still useful today, or we just made them up (why not?). My pet one is binary decision diagrams (BDDs). What is yours?