Yes, I've implemented several search algorithms in the past, but that was over 20 years ago, in school. I've used libraries ever since for doing mundane things

Yes, I've implemented several search algorithms in the past, but that was over 20 years ago, in school. I've used libraries ever since for doing mundane things like this. While I know the general idea around search algorithms, and given some Google time I could tell you which one to use in a certain scenerio and probably even whiteboard one, it's not currently "easily doable" for me to pop one out on the spot. Does that disqualify me? What about the fact that I wrote an image processing army to churn through 4.5MM images in a weekend? I didn't write the thumbnailing algorithm (yea, GraphicsMagick) but I did write a GraphicsMagick Ruby gem to work with data in-memory instead of writing to disk. Could I do it again, in an interview, on a whiteboard. Probably not, but I didn't do like that in my real job either.