| It's the least you can do when applying for a CS job I think that's precisely it: it's the least you can do. Students are taught data structures and algorithms because they don't know anything else. They can sort numbers and munge strings... and that's all. They don't know any frameworks. They don't know any problem domains. They don't know how to debug, or read an API, or identify code smells. But they have to write something, and if you want that something to be more than three lines long you have to make them do something complicated with the incredibly limited domain of knowledge they have. Thus, data structures and algorithms. Nobody ever needs to calculate Fibonacci numbers. But if they can't write a recursive descent compiler, or even handle an HTML parser, they have to learn to write recursive code on something. Thus, they do something trivial. And then they forget it, because they've applied that knowledge to something more useful. Much as you never do long division by hand, even though you had to learn how to, and you would possibly screw it up if handed one now. A student getting a BS had better know a lot more than the least of it. Test it if you can't think of anything else that might know, but it's not going to tell you if they know anything that matters. And the engineer with more experience is even less likely to have used that freshman-year stuff recently. As you say, it can tell you that they cared enough to cram it again... but they're cramming it because they don't actually need it. |