[0xFACEFEED]

> I think the point was, the algorithm is so basic that a moderately experienced software engineer could invent it - it doesn't need to be researched.

Right. My point was the problem is perceived as "basic" because the commenter memorized solutions in the problem space. If it's not something you deal with regularly (or have interest in) then it isn't as basic as it seems.

People that haven't memorized the most efficient/concise solution also freak out because they know that their whiteboard solution is going to be judged on the merits of the industry standard solution.

> bug: "takes too long to find a <file / json field / html node>"

This is almost always an issue with an underlying library. The better question is why your programmers are wasting time writing slow BFS code when they should be using well tested solutions.

Example: I recently needed to write some AST transformation code. Did I write my own AST node traversal code? Hell no! I picked a library that did the job. I spent about 20 minutes catching up on state of the art AST traversal (so I'm not blindly importing a bad solution) and let the library do the work.