[no_wizard]

I have found you can, even if its slowest of the slowest, brute force your way through traversal of a data structure, if you need to, since most languages (all?) give you iteration out of the box.

Being able to choose the appropriate data structure and explain trade-offs etc is much more valuable than simply knowing how to reverse a binary tree sorta stuff.

As I noted elsewhere in the thread, I haven't interviewed in awhile where I needed to grind out DS&A questions, but at the time where I did, I often found myself given a particular structure and asked to traverse it in some way, with is pretty heavy on the algorithmic thinking but not really testing my knowledge on data structures themselves.

Sounds to me like things have become a little more even handed out there

[BearOso]

> Being able to choose the appropriate data structure and explain trade-offs etc is much more valuable than simply knowing how to reverse a binary tree sorta stuff.

Indeed. The simplest way to invert a binary tree is to include an "invert" flag in the data structure. If it's set, walk the tree right to left instead of left to right.