> Often they just want you to be able to solve lots of tedious algorithmic problems REALLY QUICKLY. The horrible thing is that even if you CAN solve these problems, you might not be able to solve them all within the allocated time (unless you've practised a lot recently).
More to the point, at zero times in my career have I needed to do fundamental algorithm implementation. If I did, I'd question what people were doing by reinventing the standard library.
And even if I did end up needing a particular algorithmy solution to something, I'd be reading the relevant parts of TAOCP, looking at prior art, discussing it with other people in a team environment...
None of which is implementing red-black trees on a whiteboard. Really. It's completely orthogonal to software development.
More to the point, at zero times in my career have I needed to do fundamental algorithm implementation. If I did, I'd question what people were doing by reinventing the standard library.
And even if I did end up needing a particular algorithmy solution to something, I'd be reading the relevant parts of TAOCP, looking at prior art, discussing it with other people in a team environment...
None of which is implementing red-black trees on a whiteboard. Really. It's completely orthogonal to software development.