I feel like I flubbed an interview because, while I was describing my work with xpaths, the interviewer caught me off guard by asking how I would implement a simple xpath engine. I was caught off guard and answered "I think that's a mistake. I've seen a lot of half-assed xpath implementations. I would rely on the engine optimized by very smart people, as if it were a compiler." Really the interviewer was asking "Do you know about trees and graphs?"
Honestly, if there's anything you want in a senior engineer, it's probably the ability to say "You're about to try something that seems smart but I can tell you from experience that it isn't.'
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