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Sure, many programming jobs don't involve any algorithm design. But the most interesting programming jobs tend to involve algorithm design.

• VLM 12y ago
  Luckily thats only like 1% of jobs, even if all interviews are oriented toward assuming all jobs are like that. This is like the problem where distinct classes of applicants "A level" "B level" etc can be designated and have peculiar hiring techniques for their level, so logically ALL employers see themselves as an "A level employer" even if they're probably B or C or worse, and get all confused at the outcome when a "C level" employer tries to implement "A level" employee hiring practices. Another unrelated problem is there is a legit observation that the most interesting jobs involve very interesting business logic and/or unusual situations. I'd much rather be programming a bubble sort on a mars rover at NASA than writing (from scratch of course?) quicksort at a corporate crud app house, despite in theory the crud app being more "elite" of an algo. You'd be surprised how much embedded / life critical stuff is brutally brute force, and is also pretty fascinating work. Implementing a beautiful recursive algo for robot arm movement is cool, until a stack overflow kills an employee. Then its not so cool compared to brute forcing it where the employee would have lived. I heard about that one although I wasn't involved directly. (and this is bordering on hearsay so I have nothing further to say wrt that specific death)