[kafkaesq]

Is it genuinely offensive to be asked the complexity of bubble sort?

Offensive, no. Just trite and tedious.

And more fundamentally, simply not indicative of the high quality, (genuinely) cerebral environment the interview subject, back in the original article, is looking for.

Why be rude to the interviewer even if that is the case?

I get that it's generally better to be polite. But when the same kinds of tedious and disspiriting (and sometimes downright condescending, and/or simply time-wasting) behaviors come down the interviewing pipe, over and over again... I can understand the temptation to bypass decorum, and allow a gut-level, emotional response to surface.

Being as while we might generally prefer to keep things professional -- we're not potted plants, either.