If A Binary Tree Wore Pants: The Ultimate CS Fashion Dilemma

Classic case of two developers using the same word to mean completely different things. He's talking about data structures (binary trees) while she's thinking of actual trees with leaves and branches. Happens all the time in standup meetings when someone says they're "working on branches" and half the room thinks Git while the other half assumes they're outside doing yard work.

The book titled "Math Isn't Important For Programming And Other Hilarious Jokes You Can Tell Yourself" is the ultimate self-deception manual for aspiring coders. Right next to classics like "I'll document my code later" and "This regex is perfectly maintainable," we have this mathematical fallacy. Meanwhile, your algorithm complexity is O(n²), your physics engine is glitching, and your machine learning model is basically a random number generator. The best part? It's Volume II—meaning someone bought enough copies of Volume I to warrant a sequel. Probably the same person who thinks sorting algorithms are "just theory stuff."

Listen, when someone questions why you use i and j for loop counters, there's only one valid response: IT'S THE LAW. It's like asking why we drink coffee or hate meetings that could've been emails. Some traditions in programming aren't meant to be questioned—they're sacred knowledge passed down from the ancient CS gods. Using foo and bar as placeholder names, tabs vs spaces, and i , j , k for nested loops... these are the unwritten commandments that separate the true believers from the heretics. Sure, you could use descriptive variable names like index or counter , but then your fellow devs might think you're some kind of revolutionary anarchist. And nobody wants that kind of reputation in the office.

Behind every "game developer" label lurks a nightmare of vector math, 3D modeling, shader programming, and eight other specialized disciplines that would make most CS grads curl into a fetal position. It's like claiming you're a "car maker" when in reality you're simultaneously the metallurgist, electrical engineer, upholsterer, and safety tester all while trying not to set yourself on fire. The mask stays on because nobody runs away screaming when you just say "gamedev."

The hierarchy of suffering in CS specializations perfectly captured in Toy Story scenes: Cybersecurity and Game Design students? Living the Buzz Lightyear dream - endless identical clones, mass-produced and overconfident. "To infinity and beyond!" (aka "I'll be making six figures right after graduation!") Operating Systems students? That's Woody with the maniacal grin. Sure, they're dealing with kernel panics and memory management, but they're still maintaining their sanity... barely. But those poor souls specializing in Compilers? Straight to the lava pit of despair. They're drowning in parsing algorithms, abstract syntax trees, and the existential dread that comes with implementing a lexer from scratch. Not even the garbage collector can save them from this hell.

The strongman pulling a truck represents your CPU - powerful but working alone, handling one big task at a time. Meanwhile, the GPU is like those dozens of people working together to pull an airplane - individually weaker but massively parallel. After 15 years in tech, I've watched countless developers throw CPU cores at problems that scream for GPU parallelization. It's like watching someone use a sledgehammer to hang a picture frame.