This is special pleading, though, right? It being relevant to "any" large scale project really just means that projects can get big enough for it to matter, but how many jobs involve this family of software? How many interviews for positions directly related? Very few, I would guess.
Re:How to Pass a Programming Interview
by NotSammyHagar on Wednesday March 09, 2016 @12:30AM
(#11251114)
I find myself having to think about efficiency at least a couple times a week. I'm working on database implementation, and in the query processor we have to consider all the time how to evaluate various things efficiently.
Taking this at face value, were any of the techniques you use in these tasks directly addressed during your interview there?
I would say it starts becoming important for any application that has multiple concurrent users. If it's a single user running it on some device and there's no shared resource (I.E. back end), then chances are it's not going to be an issue.
This entirely depends on the kind of product you are working on. When you get to a large scale with any programming project, optimizing computational resources will cut costs, and can often add value to the customer as well.