I've been doing this for a LOOONG time. Early on, the core skill for a programmer was intensive in-depth knowledge of the language being used. We all talked a good game about what we called "reusable software," but yeah. Talk.

Now things are TOTALLY different. Doing a good job requires extensive, encyclopedic, knowledge of what's out there, how well it works, and how to integrate it. npm, nuget, maven, anaconda, we all know the drill. In a day's work it's much less necessary to implement an algorithm from memory.

What should programmers know from memory? Simple stuff like fizzbuzz. The difference between TCP and UDP. What DNS is for. If SQL data's involved the difference between JOIN and LEFT JOIN.

And, if they're experienced, they must be able to describe intelligently how their own stuff fit into the bigger system they worked on. Because there's always a bigger system.

If they're being hired to be a tech rep to an *sshole customer, possibly their performance under pressure matters a lot. Otherwise, not.

This business of high stakes quiz questions serves just one purpose: feeding the ego of the interviewer. "We have high standards!"

Yeah, so high that we wouldn't hire Jesus of Nazareth to be a storyteller.