[martinbooth]

I think the interviewer may have been a bit standoffish because he/she was expecting you to work out how to reverse a linked list rather than memorizing the algorithm.

My CS degree only taught me what a linked list is, not how to reverse one.

It's not a great question to ask because it's such a common one and many people will have learned an algorithm from a text book, but if you haven't memorized the solution it's simple enough to understand the requirements yet difficult enough to work out that you can get a good amount of insight into how a job applicant can solve rather than memorize problems.

After all, being able to separate candidates who can solve unseen problems from those who can't is one of the goals of interviews