Yes, I think you're lucky to be in a somewhat unusual position that let's you regularly work with problems like that. I'm merely a junior level developer worki

Yes, I think you're lucky to be in a somewhat unusual position that let's you regularly work with problems like that. I'm merely a junior level developer working on database engines. Most of my day-to-day involves maintenance of decades old code where the 'hard problems' have long been solved. I imagine my codebase ancestors might have needed thorough knowledge of trees at some point :)