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This is about fundamentals - e.g. when to use an array vs vector vs linked list, and I'm not talking about optimizing performance. I'm talking about functional requirements and picking the data structure with the correct behaviors to support those requirements.

There's like 5 basic data structures. Choosing the right one based on desired functionality and explaining why you picked it, that's just table stakes.

I'm not paying you six figures to write software professionally if you can't tell me when to choose a linked list over an array, and apply that knowledge to solve a problem.

2 comments

If you programming language has this concepts and even then this will highly depend on the programming language you are using.

The right data structure does not only depend on performance. I can write you the most performant code in the world if you want to but it will take 5 years. Oh we only have 1 month? then sorry for now an Array will do.

In most cases you pay someone for the skill to learn new things fast and stay motivated. Why? Because in good companies you want to hold on to the people for a long time and this people need to educate themselves. Why? Because even the basics depend on the context they are in and languages, frameworks and runtime and other stuff will change over time. 20 Years ago memory space was a problem? Do we even think about memory now? Not really unless your working on some embedded systems.

I’ve never seen a linked list in the wild in my entire career (5 years). I work on crud web apps, etl jobs, frontend etc. Actually, now that I think of it, I’ve never even seen it in OSS libraries and I contributed to a few.