[seanwilson]

> Having said all of this, without going into specific implementation details, hash tables and linked lists are incredibly simple and I see no reason why anyone calling themselves a programmer would have trouble with these. I mean, I wouldn't expect you to be able to write a good hash function or anything, but explaining the basic concept shouldn't be too hard for most programmers. If someone is self-taught, then ok maybe they haven't ever needed to learn this.

Even if you're self-taught, if you've been programming for a while you should be able to read up on what linked lists and hash tables are in 15 minutes and virtually all interview preparation guides mention data structures. If you've not had the curiosity to do that then that's a bad sign.

[falcolas]

> If you've not had the curiosity to do that then that's a bad sign.

Or you're just working from the backs of giants using built-in types. It's easy to do, when you haven't had to dig into low level code before.

I won't disagree with your premise, but it took some pretty extraordinary circumstances for me to find value in taking the time to learn about the ins and outs of linked lists and hash tables, because my every day work never required it.

It was reading an article about cuckoo hashes which finally prompted me to go down that road, and I can't regret it. That said, I've still never had to implement my own hash table for work.

[seanwilson]

> It was reading an article about cuckoo hashes which finally prompted me to go down that road, and I can't regret it. That said, I've still never had to implement my own hash table for work

That's what I'm getting at, people that have the curiosity to find out more. Nobody should be implementing their own hash table but if you don't know about basic data structure and algorithm concepts you're not going to be sharp at coming up with new efficient solutions.