“Data Structures on standard size playing cards? Now I’ve seen everything.”

No, you haven’t, because the Universe is pretty big, plus I have more to come.

What you’re seeing here is a mock-up of an idea I had brewing the past couple years. I picked up a vector editing tool and learned to craft beautiful artisanal data structure diagrams by hand. In the process, I had to re-learn data structures such as skip list and binomial heap that were left to rot somewhere in my brain.

Why am I hurting myself like this? I’m glad you asked. I used to collect Dragon Ball cards as a snotty nose kid, and boy were they expensive. But they had cool pictures and power levels on them, and giving up my entire fortune (all tree fiddy of it) for them the same way people give up theirs for NFTs today just made a lot of sense to 8 year old me.

Now that I’m a snotty nose adult with a computer science degree under my belt, I thought why not put my degree to good use? So I burned my diploma for warmth and designed these data structure collectible cards the same way any software engineer might design Dragon Ball cards: with diagrams and big Os. The big O complexities are just like hit points and mana points (Dragon Ball doesn’t have them, but you get the point).

I’m now done with my design collection (all 36 of them) and will send them in for a prototype print, then start a production run. My hope is these cards would be a nice set of computer science themed collectible cards worthy of your pocket and drawer space, and perhaps, your headspace.

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