[chillee]

Disagree. The general concept is the same - "Where can you collapse states into one". Someone who understands DP well should find tree DP natural, and might even come up with it themselves without learning about it beforehand. I'm not sure what you mean by string operations - most string DP problems don't require special treatment.

I agree that there are significant approach differences. However, the high level approach of: 1. Find a DP state that allows you to collapse states. 2. Find DP state transitions 3. Solve the problem

is constant among problems. The most common complaint I've heard about interview problems is that they relied on some "trick" to solve - DP problems don't have these tricks.