Algorithms and data structures are the base of all computing, from CRUD APIs to highly optimized data processing.

Most of us probably have forgotten more than we remember about them though from college (or maybe never learned them in the first place) because we don't necessarily use them on a daily. But just like math, good knowledge about data structures and algorithms lay the foundation for how to think about difficult problems, and how to understand where and what to optimize.

This session is a programming language agnostic journey through problem solving - graph algorithms, dynamic programming, greedy algorithms, representations and data structures. How to build solutions from first principles and combine algos to build up from easy to medium to hard leet code or advent of code style problems.

I'll also share how algorithm puzzles and competitive programming brought the fun back into programming for me, and how I use these skills in my day job.