it took a few million years until Newton figured out basic mechanics. but i don't think it's unreasonable to ask a junior engineer some basic kinematics questions!
You’re expecting the mechanical engineer to recall something they learned about kinematics, not derive it on the spot. It’s a test of knowledge, rather than cleverness. The equations of motion are also more central to physics and engineering.
A decent programmer should know that linked lists exist, their general properties, pros and cons, etc. However, cycle detection is not a particularly common operation, so not knowing Floyd’s algorithm tells you very little—-and their failure to do years of research in 45 minutes even less.
Yeah, I think a closer analogue would be asking something like "derive the conserved quantities of the gravitational two-body problem" and then dinging candidates for forgetting about the Laplace-Runge-Lenz vector
A software engineer? Sounds totally unreasonable. A mechanical engineer, sure, it's going to be required material on their education.
The tortoise and hare algorithm is not the foundational skill required to make software work the way an understanding of motion is for building structures. That's why it's often omitted from educational material yet these people are able to produce usable software after even something like a bootcamp (which I guarantee basically no bootcamps ever touched this algorithm).
I'm not sure I approve of asking even more well known algorithms like Djikstra's algorithm or A* in a job interview, unless the role was something that specifically required that area of knowledge like building pathfinders for video games or robots or something.
You’re expecting the mechanical engineer to recall something they learned about kinematics, not derive it on the spot. It’s a test of knowledge, rather than cleverness. The equations of motion are also more central to physics and engineering.
A decent programmer should know that linked lists exist, their general properties, pros and cons, etc. However, cycle detection is not a particularly common operation, so not knowing Floyd’s algorithm tells you very little—-and their failure to do years of research in 45 minutes even less.