I understand it is probably an unreal expectation. If you actually did know your min/max heaps and could implement them you'd be better off being a programmer. Never the less it is counter-productive to know nothing at all as we agree.

That's why I don't have any good solutions. It doesn't seem like there are any. Unless we can find magical unicorns who know enough about programming and software development to be competent enough to assess the abilities of programmers themselves... or at the very least understand the process enough to be able to answer their questions.