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How do people find specialised data structure that they aren't already aware of? Stumbling across random blog posts and reading the odd book on data structures can't be the optimal way.

Is there a way to search for a structure by properties? E.g. O(1) lookups, O(log(n)) inserts or better, navigates like a tree (just making this up), etc?

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I was trying to catalog them at some point in a reasonably structured way https://github.com/Dobatymo/data-algos/ https://github.com/Dobatymo/data-algos/blob/master/data-stru... But it's a lot of work and I didn't update it for a while.

My understanding is you basically just bash your head against the problem for long enough, and simultaneously have enough of a grounding in the fundamentals, that you just start to come up with it as the obvious next thing. In other words, there's no trick to it, just expertise, hard work, and an eye for what's relevant and what's irrelevant in the problem.

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