"Do you need data structures and algorithms to do graphics programming?"

Graphics programming without data structures is just a GPU painting the same triangle very fast.

Yes, that insanely complex data structure called "array of floats."

I use my own much simpler and more performant data structures rather than the ones taught in school.

Yes.

funny you mentioned red and black trees. at meta we were trying to figure out how to optimize the jemalloc allocator. We ended up with a red black implementation that made allocations much faster

Neat. And when you deleted nodes from the red-black tree....?

What exactly did they do wrong in that mesh skinning article?

Is there any large program that doesn't require data structures? I don't think so

"Based on what I C"