To add: 1) The fundamentals of algorithms can be relevant, such as understanding that one solution is more or less computational (or memory) efficient then the

To add: 1) The fundamentals of algorithms can be relevant, such as understanding that one solution is more or less computational (or memory) efficient then the next (and why), but I agree that figuring out how to do a certain a algorithm in a specific situation (usually quite far from anything the person will likely be doing) is rarely useful (unless that's the job, but that's rarely the case). There are more nuances to it, but that's the gist of it imo. 2) Fundamentals on writing maintainable code on the other hand is rarely focused on (AFAIK, I personally don't really have any experience interviewing with such companies) - even though that's usually something that is emphasized a lot in most people's jobs. Even more interesting is that, based on my experience (I've interviewed a significant amount of devs), devs are surprisingly bad at these questions and also quite often become defensive about those type of questions (very similar to how I imagine people become about algorithm questions). I believe the industry would produce better solutions if we focused more on writing cleaner, simpler and more maintainable code - also in the hiring process (thus incentivizing the educational system to align with that) than our current algorithm focus.