[turnip1979]

I'm glad your algorithm class covered this. Mine did not. It surely covered some other obscure material that you don't know. You are missing the point. If we had a standard CS curriculum, you can fault people for missing out on stuff they should know. I think part of the problem is people is that CS is too big of a discipline at this point. A systems person couldn't pass a graphics person's interview, etc.

[SamReidHughes]

But I wouldn't require somebody to know of faster exponentiation in an interview. It's still too obscure.