We exclude a heap of solutions as “invalid” without trying them because we believe the solutions are not good enough according to some arbitrary standard.

All the rules of programming are made up. mostly by white dudes looking to sell a seminar. If you can solve the problem and follow all of the rules you wanna follow? cool, good for you. this isn’t for you.

but if you’re getting stuck because you’re hung up on an algorithm being suboptimal, even though it’s barely used?

maybe let it go