Good god, absolutely everything. (sorry, couldn't resist) An algorithm can tell you how to do something, but, doesn't necessarily contain the code to do so. W

Good god, absolutely everything. (sorry, couldn't resist) An algorithm can tell you how to do something, but, doesn't necessarily contain the code to do so. When faced with a list of items, you might be inclined to just use someone else's library to do a bubble sort or a quicksort or a merge sort, but, when you know the algorithm behind each method, you can make a determination whether your list is mostly ordered, or mostly unordered and make a decision as to which one to use. Similarly, when you're dealing with compression, it makes sense to know that deflate and bzip are fairly similar, but, other compression schemes might be different. lzfx uses a simple run length encoding and doesn't compress as well, but, works very well for streaming data. Sample size would tell you that short 120-240 byte strings won't do well with bzip due to the dictionary token header, but, longer files where you can determine longer repetition strings can provide better compression. Knowing how things work helps you make the decision of which library to implement rather than just taking the Internet's word for it. Yes, sometimes the Internet contains bad information. Almost everything you code, probably uses an algorithm somewhere - you just may not be making that association. Sure there are algorithms that you may never use, but, in general, knowing what to look for can help you find a library that more closely handles some problem you're trying to solve.