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Comment by noitpmeder | Hacker News Reader

/r/iamverysmart/

What is your point? Companies wants to hire smart people which is why they have these interviews. This applies no matter what level people are at. "I forgot" isn't valid defense. All the people in these threads who says things like "I knew this but forgot" are really cringy.

The point may be that many (if they're truly senior, not someone with 3-5 years in the industry) will not have used these theories in 10+ years. The real-world application is questionable.

And my point is that I'd rather hire someone who didn't forget these things. When you learn something well you don't forget, it is like riding a bike. If you learned how to ride a bike 10 yards and then stopped and never did it again then you would forget how to do it, saying "I passed the bike riding test when I was 10, I don't need to do it again" isn't a good defense.

I mean, why did you even go to college if you intended to just forget everything afterwards instead of learning the things properly for life? I'd rather not hire people who just do the work necessary to pass and get the degree and don't want to learn more.

I'd say it shows that for most day-to-day work in the software industry, a certain percentage of the CS material we learn is simply unnecessary. No one has ever asked me to re-implement well-known algorithms that are found in well-established libraries. There are, of course, people who do this, and they do need such a background. But they are likely outliers.

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