I started programming 30+ years ago Any time I hit something new, it only "clicked" when I had an application for the topic/concept Take tree traversal I wro

I started programming 30+ years ago Any time I hit something new, it only "clicked" when I had an application for the topic/concept Take tree traversal I wrote a working ~400 line linear octree traverser in high school in C++ Learned about recursion my second year in college, and rewrote that traversal code in about half a page I had seen/heard of recursion before (even before I wrote the tree traversal code), but hadn't seen it applied to the type of problem I was working on Once I saw an application of recursive tree traversal (on a binary tree, fwiw), using it in my other setting was a 100% no brainer :) That's still true today - though I "program" notably less now (scripting, tool-specific languages, etc), all the whizbang features of whatever mean precisely nothing until I have a use case/application for them