When I say learn data structures and algorithms. I do not mean simply read up on the code. I learned programming, data structures and algorithms, under the man

When I say learn data structures and algorithms. I do not mean simply read up on the code. I learned programming, data structures and algorithms, under the man named Vinod Vishen. He never let us see any code or any book. He would explain the algorithm to us and provide a printed explanation on a plain piece of paper. Then we had to implement the algorithms in code ourselves. This approach worked wonders. Initially, It took us days to implement even simplest of algorithms because we were encouraged to constantly improve our code bit by bit. Only when he was satisfied with what we had implemented would he allow us to look at the code in the book. He taught us to think independently. Independent of the book. Unfortunately this method got a bit lost as the number his students increased from 30 - 40 to hundreds. No wonder most of the people from my batch and my seniors went on to start small but successful companies like me. Even today, most of the people I have hired are either from my batch or my seniors. I have never met a single person who delayed learning data structures and was good at programming.