Same here, I'm completely self taught, I know when the appropriate data structure for the problem at hand might be a binary tree, yet I never learned how to implement a tree data structure.

I've read plenty of implementations, but I never "studied" it thoroughly. And that's one of the reason I never went through an interview with a Big 5 company, where you're normally expected to implement i.e. a tree insertion algo on a whiteboard.

I've been programming since I was a kid, I've implemented a linked list exactly once in all that time and that was when I went back to uni to do a foundation degree in software engineering.

In reality if I need a particular data structure I just pull it in from the standard library.

You don't have to be a structural engineer to build a house ;)

> You don't have to be a structural engineer to build a house

But you need to know exactly what parts actually require a structural engineer or structural calculations. You'll be much faster at building your house if you don't have to think about when you call your engineer and when you can just guesstimate. And you are obviously re-using a lot of structural engineer work when you do (because you buy a prefab door where someone already did the calculations on the hinges etc.) Same with not needing to be a computer scientist to do most software engineering, but you need to use a lot of CS work done by others, and it speeds up your work immensely if you know what term to google.

Also, implememting these deep things (trees, linked lists, hash tables, etc.) mean you have a much better understanding of the tradeoffs you do when you use them. Trying to remember some O(N) numbers for various structures is much harder than just spending 1h making a toy linked list, 1h making an array backed list, and 3h making a hash table just ONCE and then you are set for life understanding the complexity of those things.

> You don't have to be a structural engineer to build a house ;)

No, but you're going to need one on call.

I'm reminded of when when I was still living at home and my parents had an extension and garage conversion done.

Two builders did the whole thing, one in his late 40s and one in his 60s, and for the most part everything they did was just grunt work with very little need for craftsmanship. It's just banging together stud timbers, pouring concrete, digging holes, laying and packing store bought materials etc. Sure there's a lot of experience behind doing that safely and efficiently, but it's not rocket science and nothing a confident DIY enthusiast couldn't read-up on as they went along.

However there were 3 times when they had to call in experts. 1) a bricklayer (a surprisingly impressive craft if you don't want your house to look like shit). 2) roofers (you definitely don't want a roof laid by amateurs) and 3) a structural engineer to advise on (and to sign-off on) reinforcing a supporting wall that held up part of the new roof.

Software isn't that different. You need someone who really knows their shit for maybe 20% and the rest you can sort of palm off and can be done by any of ours peers with just a few years experience.

Nothing to study. Trees are recursively understood and the methods are recursive. Understand recursion and you understand recursion.