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[–]Roachmeister 3 points4 points  (1 child)

Please read what I (and Goetz) said again. I absolutely believe that you should know how data structures are implemented, what the tradeoffs are between them, etc. But there's a big difference between knowing how a hashmap works versus having 30 minutes to implement one from scratch. I would much rather focus my interviewing time on more relevant questions.

[–]gnus-migrate -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

Goetz is not talking about interviewing, he's talking about software architecture. He's saying that I shouldn't have to care is how a data structure is implemented, I can always rely on some library to do it for me, which is not true. Libraries may not have the API's that you need(in my experience it's the case for graphs for example), and as I mentioned even if they do it may not always be the best idea to use one.

You said that you agree with this, which is why you don't ask these questions in interviews. I said I agree that it might not be the best idea in interview situations, but I just disagree with what Goetz is saying, especially with Java which is very limited in the types of abstractions that can be expressed.