[Xcelerate]

My problem is that I forget things very quickly. I've implemented optimized k-d trees and VP trees from scratch, but I forget the complexity of searching, rebalancing, etc. Even though I've implemented it before. I normally just Google something simple like that when I need to "re-remember". I suppose interview performance at those types of companies is kind of like high school and college — just cram all that stuff into memory beforehand and forget it right after the test.

My most recent interview was very well done and not like an "algorithm quiz" at all. I had to bring my laptop and give a short overview of a project I had recently worked on. I think this really plays to the candidate's strengths.

[buserror]

I so totally agree! Forgetting stuff is as important as learning new one, because it forces you to learn/re-learn quickly.

I wrote millions and millions of lines of code in my 30 years career, I was once a top shot mac developer, and I was once a top shot computer geometry expert, and an OpenGL expert and all of that, and I've forgotten most of it... If someone asked me a trick question, I'd look like a fool.

Simply because I don't need it. My strength over all these years is my capacity at learning stuff quickly, and that doesn't come up in a trick-question interview.

So for these data structures questions: In 30 years I once had to implement a binary tree for any sort of problem I had in my job. Now it's not the same for hashes, lists, queues and many others, but trees? Quite frankly it's a CS toy. You know it's on the shelf in case it's needed, but it very rarely get a dusting.