Comment by pjlegato

Well said. If I ever did actually have to implement a red/black tree or a TCP stack for my job as a software engineer (which has somehow never come up yet), I wouldn't do it by standing at a whiteboard racking my brain for the details, and I certainly wouldn't set a one-hour timer. I'd pick up a book or read some reputable websites to refresh my memory first, and I'd take my time writing it, since it'd have to be an important corner case to necessitate rewriting something complex that's already pretty well implemented.