[Fauntleroy]

The thing that always gets me is when I'm interviewing for a front-end development position, and they end up asking me how to write algorithms during the interview. Do you really want me to write algorithms all day? Or do you really want me to build the front end of your website? I've written very few algorithms in my time as a front end developer, but nearly every day I have to deal with an obscure browser quirk, rendering optimization, or usability problem. Ask me about one of those problems!

[goldfeld]

I tend to disagree. Why would you ask me about an obscure browser quirk? The interviewer would be much more better off testing my persistent and precise Google and StackOverflow searching skills in this case. Same for optimizations, and usability is quite subjective and truly needs A/B testing and real user feedback to have a conclusive decision. You could test those skills instead of directly asking me to solve one of the problems you cited. Now, writing an algorithm is not something, for the most part, that you would have needed to have memorized in order to answer the question. Developing even a naive algorithmic implementation for a given hairy problem is an actual skill that developers carry with them to be useful anywhere, and in my front end work they have been useful (plus it's so fun when I get to apply them). Granted, I'm currently developing a completely flexible and configurable application, so I tend to get into data structures and algorithms even though my work is exclusively CoffeeScript on the front end.

[chrisabrams]

For 98% of the gigs it really is silly to ask algorithm questions. Most front-end guys don't come from a CS background; they either picked it up on their own, transitioned from design, etc. In these cases the back-end is doing the heavy lifting.

For the other 2% of the gigs, yeah it's really important.