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Some people consider me a senior, yet the only sorting algorithm I actually remember and can write from scratch without consulting anything is bubble sort. And maybe insertion sort. And that's it. Both horribly inefficient. In real life I use whatever the language provides, for example Collections.sort in Java.

The more general problem is just how far removed from reality are all these questions. I once tried interviewing for Google, just for fun because they sent me an email about it. They asked me about quicksort, I said that I'm able to implement it in any language I know given an hour and the ability to google things. They were apparently not very satisfied with this response.

Why do you need to recite things from memory on the interviews while you'll be able to consult whatever the hell you want on your actual job? No one knows.



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