[olingern]

I think the HN crowd goes 50/50 on this. One half hates it and the other believes it's a necessary evil. And then there's the small minority that enjoys it.

I was apart of the former half who hated algorithms until I was tasked with help hiring people. The only thing I believe that is worse than an algorithm is me spending 8+ hours of my free time on a "take home" problem. So, I used pretty easy to solve algorithms alongside real problems I had solved recently for interviews.

Being on the other side as the interviewer really made me see the value of algorithms. It becomes a medium where candidates can convey competency. I think it has gotten murky due to the lines between a web developer and software engineer blurring. That statement alone can be a can of worms.

Anyway, I would say algorithms / data structures for backend development do come up when laying the groundwork for a new project or something that might see a lot of traffic. Lots of things in development model certain data structures (queues, stacks, graphs, etc.) so knowing them allows you to converse with your co-workers and conceptualize them to others. Probably comes up somewhere between 2-5% of the time. Design patterns probably get brought more as their a bit more applicable for everyday tasks. It really depends on who you're around, how challenging the work is, and what the engineering culture is like.

[nprateem]

> It becomes a medium where candidates can convey competency

I really struggle to see how regurgitating something someone's read/heard about something they didn't invent/modify conveys anything beyond memory.