Having an algorithm memorized? Probably not. Being able to select the correct algorithm for a particular problem? Absolutely.

This assumes that everyone just has a huge set of canned answers memorized, versus putting together some on-the-fly combinations of some building blocks like maps and different things to do with lists.

If you can memorize the whole world, that probably would be useful day to day too - I'm sure you'd see a lot of stuff you could use the shit you memorized for! - but it doesn't seem to be happening much.

Yes! A former engineer at Google put together this blog post[0] about an interview question he asks and its pertinence to what's done day to day at Google. It sheds some light on the usefulness of having these algorithms memorized.

[0] https://medium.com/@alexgolec/google-interview-problems-rati...

Maybe I'm In a slightly unique position because the role I hire for is "Algorithm Developer", but if you've memorised an algorithm I will keep asking you questions until I find an algorithm that you haven't memorised. I don't care whether you know the "correct" algorithm, I care that you can find a working solution to an unknown problem (since that's literally your job) and I care that you know how to assess the good and bad parts of your solution.

Yes