I don't spend a ton of time mastering algorithms for interviews. Maybe I should. But studying a canned set of specific formulas is about as fun as memorizing

I don't spend a ton of time mastering algorithms for interviews. Maybe I should. But studying a canned set of specific formulas is about as fun as memorizing a Math textbook. I've found that I become a better programmer by focusing on what's interesting to me. Often times one can guess at a pretty good solution in an interview by simply having tried to make enough things fast enough, modular enough, DRY enough, etc. My basic hypothesis is that most interviewers wanna know you can think how to make things easier to reason about, faster, can ship something, and the you have enough depth to help them in a meaningful way.