[ExtremisAndy]

I felt this comment in my soul. I’ll never understand it: I’ve written thousands of lines of code (as a hobbyist) to solve all sorts of problems I’ve run into and yet always seem to struggle to wrap my mind around the core algorithms any real developer should be able to handle easily. This is why I’ve never pursued programming as a career.

[vbezhenar]

It took computer scientists of the past, a lot of effort to come up with these complicated algorithms. They are not easy or trivial. They are complicated and that's OK that you can't just quickly understand them. Your imaginary "real developer" at best memorised the algorithms, but that hardly differs from smart monkey, so probably not something to be very proud of.

It is your choice which career to pursue, but in my experience, absolute majority of programmers don't know algorithms and data structures outside of very shallow understanding required to pass some popular interview questions. May be you've put too high artificial barriers, which weren't necessary.

To be a professional software developer, you need to write code to solve real life tasks. These tasks mostly super-primitive in terms of algorithms. You just glue together libraries and write so-called "business-logic" in terms of incomprehensible tree of if-s which nobody truly understands. People love it and pay money for it.

[melagonster]

Thanks for your kind comment! I do not have any systematic leaning of computer science; I often feel confused when reading textbooks on algorithms hahaha.

Should I be familiar with every step of Dijkstra’s search algorithm and remember the pseudocode at all times? Why don’t the textbooks explain why the algorithm is correct?

[monadgonad]

> Should I be familiar with every step of Dijkstra’s search algorithm and remember the pseudocode at all times?

Somehow, I think you already know the answer to that is "no".

I've been working as a software engineer for over 8 years, with no computer science education. I don't know what Dijkstra's search algorithm is, let alone have memorised the pseudocode. I flicked through a book of data structures and algorithms once, but that was after I got my first software job. Unless you're only aiming for Google etc, you don't really need any of this.

[chopin]

You should know the trade-offs of different algorithms, though. Many libraries let you choose the implementation for a spcific problem. For instance tree vs. hash map where you trade memory for speed.

[minitech]

> Why don’t the textbooks explain why the algorithm is correct?

The good ones do!

> Should I be familiar with every step of Dijkstra’s search algorithm and remember the pseudocode at all times?

If it’s the kind of thing you care to be familiar with, then being able to rederive every step of the usual-suspect algorithms is well within reach, yes. You don’t need to remember things in terms of pseudocode as such, more just broad concepts.

[mamcx]

Something that helps, I think, is to make something practical that demands it.

I used to think alike (I'm +30 year programing) until I decide to do https://tablam.org, and making a "database" is the kind of project where all this stuff suddenly is practical and worthwhile.