&gt;&gt;was it worth it?<p>You are not supposed to read about any algorithm. There is nothing special about knowing how some sorting algorithm works, or any algorithm for that matter. That knowledge is no better than knowing how some war in history happened. Or remembering arcane trivial about things. Knowing how to sort a list a dozen ways, no big deal. Unless you discovered the algorithms yourself, there is nothing special about just knowing how these things work.<p>You are supposed to learn how to discover your own algorithms, reasoning from the first principles, learning the axioms that govern the area of the problem, learn the rules, then work out step by the step, deriving new results from the results discovered a step back.<p>You are supposed to learn how to reason about the problem. You are supposed to learn to understand the problem, state it in simple terms, learn to draw diagrams to represent it, solve sub problems. Build theories, hypothesis, question them, prove them etc.<p>We don&#x27;t do algorithm studies the right way.<p>Even software interviews are not testing algorithm skills, they are testing algorithm memorization skills. Nothing different than those teachers who used to confuse memorizing multiplication tables with genius.