Writing Algorithms

Ah algorithms, that fundamental part of computer science education (and job interviews) which seem to very rarely come up in real world, day to day software development.

Sometimes I have a  real yearning to tackle a technical problem that involves writing an implementation of a red-black tree or a bucket sort, or hell, just write a function that uses recursion.  These opportunities come up so infrequently that when they do it’s a real pleasure to be savored.

It’s worth making those moments happen if they don’t come up very often at work.  Go out of your way to find projects that create the challenges you want to take on.  It’ll really remind you about what you love about writing software.