[falcolas]

> If you've not had the curiosity to do that then that's a bad sign.

Or you're just working from the backs of giants using built-in types. It's easy to do, when you haven't had to dig into low level code before.

I won't disagree with your premise, but it took some pretty extraordinary circumstances for me to find value in taking the time to learn about the ins and outs of linked lists and hash tables, because my every day work never required it.

It was reading an article about cuckoo hashes which finally prompted me to go down that road, and I can't regret it. That said, I've still never had to implement my own hash table for work.

[seanwilson]

> It was reading an article about cuckoo hashes which finally prompted me to go down that road, and I can't regret it. That said, I've still never had to implement my own hash table for work

That's what I'm getting at, people that have the curiosity to find out more. Nobody should be implementing their own hash table but if you don't know about basic data structure and algorithm concepts you're not going to be sharp at coming up with new efficient solutions.