nvbhargava

I use Todoist to keep track of my tasks. But I started using toggl (toggl.com) recently to keep track of how long I spend on a single task, and I started becoming more productive because of this.

Yes, I was wondering if people stubbornly don't use data structures that they're familiar with. To be more clear, I meant implementing a whole new data structure (let's say a trie) that a library/language might not already provide.

This, of course, is taking into consideration that the problem is non-trivial, and it improves the speed/performance.

Interesting.

I totally agree. This question I'd say was more focused towards that 3% of the time. So, if you believe that there is an opportunity to optimize something non-trivial, would you implement a whole new data structure for that?

Hackathons, I believe, are not about winning/losing. They're about learning/picking up new things in a limited amount of time. Losing a hackathon does not mean you should stop programming -- but disliking programming itself means you should. I've lost a bunch of hackathons, but I still like programming and do it everyday. Do not let a competition get in the way of your whole career.