[fundabulousrIII]

It should be mandatory for programmers to be able to concoct even bad examples of a sort algorithm in real time and create data structures for anything from a linked list to binary trees.

It is also important to have candidate code samples for an interview with dissection and analysis by the candidate. This is to understand where the programmer is in their professional development, how much is copy-paste and how much is functional and design integration. All this demonstrates level of knowledge and the candidates productive approaches.

Having to teach programmers how to deal with recursion and other fundamental concepts or language specific approaches like pointer arithmetic or interpreted language nuances like lambda calculus and list comprehension should not be on the table.

[ubernostrum]

Ah yes, "fundamentals". Also known as "everyone should have to go through the same hazing rituals I went through!"

[CodeMage]

All modern software is built on layers upon layers of leaky abstractions. If you view fundamentals as nothing more than hazing rituals, you won't even be aware of just where the abstractions start to leak and you'll end up writing shitty code. Of course, it's perfectly possible nowadays to do so and let it be an SEP (Somebody Else's Problem).