There is a Russian saying, “Wise people like to learn, fools like to teach”. I like to teach.
Teaching has been my second nature for quite a while. Since I graduated I have been teaching part-time almost every year. And often I taught computer science fundamentals, for instance, data structures and algorithms.
I believe that knowing basic search algorithms, and being fluent in data structures can help you in life… well… at least if you are a programmer. Not because you may use them often, but because you have to know how the bricks of the entire bulding look like.
I have seen many mistakes and confusion when people needed to code simple things. My first commercial program was a sorting program. It worked 40 minutes to sort the data every week for one control system. Not a big deal. After a year being in production I found a utility library and replaced my sort program with the one from that library. It worked 3 minutes to sort the same amount of data. The difference was just in simply choosing a better algorithm. I was ashamed.
What’s the point? Nothing, really. However, if you want to refresh your knowledge of data structures and algorithms, here is a link to the list of the most popular books on the subject. The stars show the amazon.com rating of the books, the numbers show my personal rating.