I went in the other direction and it was enlightening too. I learned how useful hash tables can be, and that a word count algorithm need not be a complicated as

I went in the other direction and it was enlightening too. I learned how useful hash tables can be, and that a word count algorithm need not be a complicated assignment full of segmentation faults. :-) I also learned how data structure libraries can be separated from user code (when learning C in class we usually created ad-hoc data structures heavily coupled with the calling code).