It's like this for every single subject. Griping about the ignorance of others is awfully hard to distinguish from boasting about your superiority. For the vas

It's like this for every single subject. Griping about the ignorance of others is awfully hard to distinguish from boasting about your superiority. For the vast majority of problems, knowing Knuth is about as useful as being able to quote Tacitus, compose a Petrarchan sonnet, describe the Krebs cycle, or recount the details of Australia's 1882 victory at The Oval. You would have had the same blank look if you demonstrated your microkernel operating system, LALR parser, or Needleman–Wunsch-based sequence alignment tool. Why should they care? If you can't explain to them why it's important, then perhaps it actually isn't important for the job. My previous comment objected to the idea that people should be rejected solely because they know esoteric knowledge. Your gripe seems to be that uncommon knowledge makes someone somehow special. You'll get no empathy from me.