My answer was, "I don't know; I would look it up in a book. Is this really relevant for an architect position?" I got the offer anyway and turned it down.
I think these technical interview questions are a silly way to evaluate developers. You almost never have to write low-level sort routines because you just call them in runtime libraries. But it's harder to evaluate the more important ability to modularize code and manage complexity.
My answer was, "I don't know; I would look it up in a book. Is this really relevant for an architect position?" I got the offer anyway and turned it down.
I think these technical interview questions are a silly way to evaluate developers. You almost never have to write low-level sort routines because you just call them in runtime libraries. But it's harder to evaluate the more important ability to modularize code and manage complexity.