When I had less than 5yrs experience I used to ask these types of questions, thinking they showed the ability of a developer to reason out critical software issues. Then I met a guy who had practically memorized everything I could ask. He spit out answers so fast it was appallingly clear he was regurgitating answers from a book. This proved nothing about him and everything about me.
Today, I recognize that good software development owes nothing to data structure knowledge or obscure algorithms. This knowledge can't hurt but very few jobs or languages require you build a skip list from scratch. Instead, writing good software requires the ability to maintain a system, to debug problems, and to give constructive code review. That's it.
Today, I recognize that good software development owes nothing to data structure knowledge or obscure algorithms. This knowledge can't hurt but very few jobs or languages require you build a skip list from scratch. Instead, writing good software requires the ability to maintain a system, to debug problems, and to give constructive code review. That's it.