1. Solutions are typically written bottom up 2. The meat of the problem is understanding how to formulate it such that this "recursion" is possible. Point two

1. Solutions are typically written bottom up 2. The meat of the problem is understanding how to formulate it such that this "recursion" is possible. Point two is often non-trivial so your "just" -- while technically correct -- isn't true in practice. If you solve a variety of medium and difficult DP problems, it will be clear why. Eg: https://www.hackerrank.com/domains/algorithms?filters%5Bsubdomains%5D%5B%5D=dynamic-programming https://www.hackerrank.com/domains/algorithms?filters%5Bsubd... (I have no affiliation with the site)