Data structures and algorithms I used working as a software engineer

I just read this post on hackernews and am inspired to my own experience building a mobile game app 8 years ago.

• I use A* (an extension of Dijkstra's shortest path first algorithm) to generate the game puzzles
• I use doubly linked list to allow characters in the game to move back and forth in a predefined patterns
• I use stack for undo
• I may have used queue (can't remember where)

When I started writing the first line of code for the game sitting at a coworking space near Madison Square Park, Manhattan, I never thought I would need to use so much algorithms and data structures. Things I studied in college and promptly forgot about them started becoming relevant in ways I never expected.

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Not just in games, data structures and algorithms are the cornerstone of many industries, powering security, navigation, search, ML, and a myriad of other applications.  It is the foundational tool in a good software engineer's arsenal.

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The top university (the Hanoi University of Science & Technology), has an engineering curriculum that is heavy on math, logic, data structures, algorithm design and analysis. Countless graduates from HUST have gone abroad, studied in the US and are now gainfully employed at many FAANG companies in Silicon Valley.  We recruit these engineers as US based tech PM. For the grads who stay back in Vietnam, many work for us as software engineers.