I think it's nice knowing about analogous problems. If you know what you're trying to do is similar to NPC, one can quickly either dismiss the feature/problem,

I think it's nice knowing about analogous problems. If you know what you're trying to do is similar to NPC, one can quickly either dismiss the feature/problem, convert it to a problem with an existing solver, or maybe know that in general it's hard to solve but a relaxed variant is good enough. I'd wish more of those problems showed up in my daily work, though. Btw, a cool popsci book about algorithms occuring in day to day life is "Algorithms to live by".