Presumably they are never going to have to implement or modify a hash table (which kind? Cuckoo, Hopscotch, Robin Hood, ...?), but always use one provided by a

Presumably they are never going to have to implement or modify a hash table (which kind? Cuckoo, Hopscotch, Robin Hood, ...?), but always use one provided by a library (very likely the standard library of their programming language). Of course knowledge about the performance characteristics of a hash table (especially in comparison to lists) is useful. Binary search isn't all that great due to cache misses. It's likely you won't regret using a hash table instead. As for pointers, depending on the programming language you use they may not be exposed in a way that the knowledge is all that relevant. In a language such as C you can't reasonably avoid them, but for Java, or Python, SQL, or JavaScript you just have references, which tend to be much simpler. Knowledge about how to use Framework X will probably turn out to be a lot more relevant and helpful for the day-to-day work of most developers.