"Here's 5 lines of pseudocode" "Here's a real-world implementation of the pseudocode. Note this section does not improve the asymptotic case, but has significant constant-factor advantages for small inputs."

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I noticed you mentioned "heap" assuming you're talking about the data-structure, that would probably be in a different class than one where you read windows source code. Just like you probably wouldn't read Joyce in a class on composing newspaper articles.

I still think it's useful to dissect existing code to get an idea of how complicated it really can be. A CS undergrad may graduate without ever reading or writing a single program over 1kloc. Even from an academia perspective, having a concept that real-world software is usually 100s or 1000s of kloc is likely useful.

A typical experience when I re-implement a technique from an academic paper:

1) Read the paper's high level description and pseudocode.

2) Write some test cases.

3) Write code based on the paper's pseudocode.

4) Observe that my test case results do not match what the authors show.

4a) Fiddle repeatedly with possible ambiguities in the pseudocode-to-real-code translation until test cases match publication. This involves a certain amount of mind reading and speculation. "They said argmax, but there are possible singularities... maybe argmax followed by clamping."

4b) Request source code from the authors. Upon receiving it, find that their real implementation diverges in small but significant ways from the pseudocode that was published. They have mixed actual-code algorithm outputs with incomplete pseudocode algorithm descriptions in the paper.