> I’ve been a professional developer for 20 years and have never had to recite CS algorithms or solve obtuse problems. I'll see your twenty and raise to 38 on

> I’ve been a professional developer for 20 years and have never had to recite CS algorithms or solve obtuse problems. I'll see your twenty and raise to 38 on the same basis. In fact no one I know has ever had to solve the algorithm problems that seem so common now (in the US at least). The nearest I came to it was in a previous career as an electronics engineer where the interviewer gave me the circuit for a simple common emitter amplifier and asked me to describe it's characteristics. He was very apologetic afterwards and said that experience had taught him that recently qualified electronics graduates often had so little practical experience that he could not afford to employ them as it took them too long to get up to speed; so he used this simple test, and it was very simple, to sort out those who could be gently shown the door immediately to avoid wasting his and their time.