[RandomOpinion]

That story about Einstein doesn't illustrate what you think it does. Einstein was a theoretical physicist, not an experimental physicist; there's no reason for him to have known the precise value. However, you can bet that Einstein knew the theory quite thoroughly (review his writings if you believe otherwise) and would have been rather less than impressed by anyone calling themselves a physicist who did not.

And aside from that, let's face it, none of us here are Einsteins.

[enraged_camel]

I'm not sure I buy that distinction. Do you believe that experimental physicists know every single formula and can recite it off the top of their head? Because unless they use those formulas constantly in their work, they end up having to look them up.

Same thing with algorithms like tree traversal. You should know the theory behind them, but unless you regularly implement them, there is zero reason to commit their implementation to memory to the extent that you can casually write them on the white board during an interview.

>>And aside from that, let's face it, none of us here are Einsteins.

Even more reason to not try to memorize something unless you use it constantly.

[hashseed]

But imagine Einstein having to look up how to derive x^2. I'd say that's a pretty close equivalent to knowing tree traversal in CS. It should just come naturally.

[coldpie]

I've been working in the programming industry for ten years and have never had to implement tree traversal. I could probably scrape together a naive implementation in a relatively short amount of time, but it's certainly not something I've memorized. But then, I'm a programmer, not a computer scientist.

[enraged_camel]

If one is a computer scientist, yes. If one is a programmer, not at all.