DAY 50 - Balanced Binary Tree (BONUS PART – Early Return Optimization)

Today’s video is a small bonus detour from the optimized balanced binary tree solution. We already had the main optimized version running in O(n), but in this part, I compare it with a subtle improvement: returning immediately once a subtree is already known to be unbalanced. The big lesson here is that Big O does not always show every improvement. Both solutions still look like O(n) in complexity, but the second version can avoid extra work in real cases because it does not keep checking the right side when the left side has already failed. This is a nice example of how small implementation details can still matter in real systems. DAY 50 - Balanced Binary Tree BONUS PART – Early Return Optimization Pattern: Post-order traversal Time: O(n) Space: O(n)