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Better than the Fall 2015 6.046J where the TA admits he's never implemented the tree algorithm he's teaching in code. At MIT. As a graduate student.

Let that sink in.

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You don’t need to implement algorithms in order to teach them.

What is supposedly the problem with that? Code is the implementation of an abstract algorithm and it is the understanding of the algorithm that is important.

While that is true, it's also important to recognize that sometimes it's easy to hand-wave when discussing algorithm, in a way that's impossible when you write actual code.

I have noticed this a lot of time when interviewing SWE roles (a request to commenters: let's spare ourselves the usual centithread complaining about whiteboard interviewing)—a lot of people can vaguely talk about the algo but not able to write code for it.

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