[mattnewton]

To debug the traversal algorithm when it breaks in production?

Also, if you know that all the companies do this, why don’t you just study before hand? Tree traversals come up multiple times in the article. I understand the author’s frustration but not their (early) insistence on not studying for an important interview. When they did study later I wonder how seriously they took it based on the tone.

[delinka]

>To debug the traversal algorithm when it breaks in production?

And what's the likelihood of that happening with a well-used framework? Maybe the interviewer wants to see my ability to debug problems - great let's do that instead. You want to see how I work? OK, let's pair on something. Pinning this to "implement BFS at the drop of a hat on a whiteboard or in this project" is bullshit.

>Also, if you know that all the companies do this, why don’t you just study before hand?

Fine. I'll implement a few solutions to the problem in the languages I'm familiar with and put it on GitHub. Now the interviewer can check it out and we don't have to waste time at a whiteboard.

[throwawaymath]

> what's the likelihood of that happening with a well-used framework?

In my experience, higher than you'd hope.

[zentiggr]

You have heard of the monkey - ladder - banana experiments?

Just because the interview culture has evolved to this awkward unrepresentative generally unhelpful filtering method, is no justification for "well just do it that way and you'll be fine".

If I'm the new monkey, and someone smacks me for touching the ladder, I'm going to ask why and push back if there's no good answer.