I find it astonishing how I often I've been asked about binary trees and binary search trees in web developer interviews. In all my time, I've come across some circumstances where some concepts like state machines were helpful, but have yet to run into a time where I needed to understand or write a binary tree. At first I felt ashamed, but over time the feeling flipped and I felt bad for the interviewer asking such a non-applicable question as for them to look rather foolish. It's like asking a biologist to describe the Dirac equation.
Fortunately I've yet to run into this once I spent enough time as a mid-level developer and became senior. If it's any ray of hope for younger developers out there, you will get to a point where you basically bypass all that crap and interviews can be more like a friendly chat between peers.
Fortunately I've yet to run into this once I spent enough time as a mid-level developer and became senior. If it's any ray of hope for younger developers out there, you will get to a point where you basically bypass all that crap and interviews can be more like a friendly chat between peers.