in reply to (OT) Real World Skills Versus CS Skills

I'm a CS guy who was completely forgotten red-black trees after about 5 years in the real world. I've also forgotten how to do flux integrals. I could pick both up if required. This is an example, IMHO, about why technical questions on interviews can be misleading. If they can honestly explain they'd have to look something up, that's *totally* fine. You want people that can learn quickly and do good work (including work that involves making up *new* things), not just folks that are walking textbooks. Red-black trees? I probably forgot that a week after the datastructures final.
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Re^2: (OT) Real World Skills Versus CS Skills
by runrig (Abbot) on Jan 24, 2006 at 19:47 UTC
    I'm a CS guy who was completely forgotten red-black trees after about 5 years in the real world.

    At least you had red-black trees. When I went to school, we didn't have any red, and we were lucky to get black. (Seriously, though I could guess it had something to do with binary trees, the name 'red-black' wasn't made up until a couple of years before my Data Structures class, so the name probably didn't make it into the book we used, though I don't have the book anymore so I can't check).

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      I heard of them as "2-3 trees" before I heard the red-black name.

      ---
      alter ego of demerphq
[reply]

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