I wanted that fun back

I decided to start learning algorithms again. I found a book: 李煜东’s 《算法竞赛进阶指南》.

Junior high is when I actually started programming. Not from a textbook. From problems that were interesting, the kind you want to keep chewing. I would not look at the official solution. I could not look. I had to invent a way myself — a stupid way, messy code, whatever, as long as it was mine and it worked. I wrung myself dry. Some nights I still could not sleep. And I had energy. It did not feel like suffering. I was into it. Genuinely into it.

In university I minored in CS and took the algorithm courses. The book was Introduction to Algorithms — CLRS, 算法导论. So there was theory. What there was not, or what I could not find, was how interesting it used to feel. I was also sitting exams, getting through them, and there were other courses stacking on top. I always had the feeling I never got to enjoy algorithms. The material was there. The fun was not.

Then job hunting. LeetCode. The motive was more utilitarian still. I learned to grind in volume, to memorize templates. That was painful. I know what that kind of practice does to a problem. You stop wanting to invent a way. You want the template.

The day job is already programming — writing programs, writing systems, writing business code. I wanted another path. Something that pokes the brain. Some other way to pick up a bit of inspiration. I don’t know if any of that leaks back into the job. That is not even the main thing.

The main thing is I want the kind of fun I had in junior high. Not the grind. Not the exam. The sitting-with-a-problem, refusing the editorial, still-awake-and-not-miserable kind. I have some mathematics now. I can read this book thick. I can look at a problem the way I look at math, and maybe see it more thoroughly than I could when I was fourteen and running on stubbornness alone. Learn algorithms. Enjoy it, this time. I don’t know.