[softbuilder]

>And programmers are asked to program

Programmers are almost never asked to program. They are asked to solve 50-year old CS problems on a whiteboard.

[icelancer]

Alright. Let's assume we have this guy, we'll call him a... oh, I dunno, a salesperson. And there are all these cities he must visit to sell his wares. BUT, oh-ho, there's a catch! Let me tell you how many times he can visit each city...

[dspeyer]

At Google, at least, we try to make up new questions frequently and retire old ones.

[Evbn]

There aren't enough problem in the world for that to be possible, ignoring extremely superficial differences.

It always comes down to exercises from CLR lightly dressed up.

[theootz]

Sorry, but what's CLR?

[cagey]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_Algorithms