Before grokking this article my initial thought was "everyone today seems to use hash tables or dictionaries". Dicts are everywhere in Python and Objects are the hash table used within JavaScript.

I read the whole Algorithm Design Manual[1] and it can be a bit dry so I'm actually very excited to read Grokking Algorithms to see if it will indeed be helpful for professional developers to ace their ds/algo exams.

[1] https://www.adamconrad.dev/tag/algorithms/

> "I've never had to use these data structures, and even if I did, I would look them up again."

Exactly.

Also, notice these companies are the top largest, tech-focused companies that require this low-level manipulation. I can't imagine you need to re-implement an algorithm at another job.

Simpler algorithms sure, but at that point it's just basic programming.