[ominous_prime]

> IMO, 99.9% of the time you don't need the more obscure data structures

Absolutely, and familiarity with these data structures is what's required to prevent these mistakes. I think a good understanding of these is more likely to prevent one from using them, or in some cases, "inventing" them.

[earino]

huge point. Nothing like seeing someone hand-implement (poorly) a balanced tree.. and usually be very proud of it.

[Trey-Jackson]

That's a fair point.

Though another way to avoid making the mistakes is to not invent data structures. That's what libraries are for, and anyone not using a library data structure should be able to defend why they're not. Odds are, they've got no chance of writing something better than what the libraries provide (or they'd be a library writer and already know these things).