ok, does it make much sense to know what these are for php? red black tree's b+ tree's binary heaps ? I'm building my own cms and playing around with OOP, i was told from a C developer that i should look into red black tree's, B+ tree's, data structures, etc. if i want to really get into OOP. But my question is, just how important is that stuff in PHP? i mean does anyone here even know what i'm talking about? if so then can you give me a real world example of applying red/black trees to a php based website?
I think your C developer was just showing off. These things are important as you start to deal with large amounts of data, complex data structures, or performance worries. But chances are, if you're doing your OOP correctly, you can transition to more arcane data structures later on without being terribly disruptive. On the other hand, if you are serious about being a programmer, it does pay to have at least a passing familiarity with common data structures. Otherwise you will waste a lot of time trying to solve problems which could be very easy.