You should prepare for an interview. However 5 hours seems like a lot and I question if CS101 is worth preparing for. (If I know you will ask about a red-black tree I can look it up - but like most engineers I never think about it because my standard library has it implemented for me - unless the job is implementing the standard library I would not expect you to ask that question)
You might be asked to write something like fizz-buzz in an interview - but the point is there isn't a good answer to that. (there are a few possible solutions, but all of them have something you should not like - which makes it a simple yet real world like problem and thus something you should be able to figure out in less than an hour without study)
What you should prepare is figure out how they interview and thus what questions they might ask. (nobody will tell you what questions will be asked, but they may tell you the style) Practice the answers. Practice stories of how you worked in the past so you can twist the story to answer the question (the above is how you should prepare for the STARS interview my company does). If you were in prison or something then be prepared to talk about why they should believe you are reformed, but most people don't have such a thing in their past that they should find.
yeah, you should put your prep time into the non-technical parts of the interview.
- everybody you meet is going to ask "so, tell me about yourself" so you better have a good answer. have a pitch that highlights relevant parts of your work history, discuss goals/interests, show a bit of personality.
- there's always going to be "do you have any questions for me?", so you need to have a couple of questions ready to go that make you seem interested/thoughtful AND help you extract good signal from the interviewer.
If you are going to refuse any offer don't waste their and your time. However if you might accept an offer you should prepare, since you want to know what you will be getting yourself into.
part of preparing is learning what the company does. Most of us work for a company the majority reading this have never heard of. you want to know what the potential company does so you can ask intelligent questions.
You might be misunderstanding what I mean by "prepare". I mean companies that expect you to have crammed algorithms/leet code/CS new grad before their interviews. Then if you don't, they treat you like you are a huge imposter/liar who cannot code.
I certainly am mentally prepared when I speak with a company and treat them professionally. I expect the same basically.
You need to go back and read what I wrote originally - I thought I was clearly stating that you shouldn't be cramming algorithms/leet code. That should be a waste of your time, and even when it isn't it is a bad sign if the company asks questions where such studying would be helpful (though sometimes that might your least bad option to take a job there anyway).
Prepare for an interview means look up the company. You often can figure out what style of interview they do and prepare to answer those questions. You often can figure out if there are concerns that you want to probe in your turn to ask them questions.
You might be asked to write something like fizz-buzz in an interview - but the point is there isn't a good answer to that. (there are a few possible solutions, but all of them have something you should not like - which makes it a simple yet real world like problem and thus something you should be able to figure out in less than an hour without study)
What you should prepare is figure out how they interview and thus what questions they might ask. (nobody will tell you what questions will be asked, but they may tell you the style) Practice the answers. Practice stories of how you worked in the past so you can twist the story to answer the question (the above is how you should prepare for the STARS interview my company does). If you were in prison or something then be prepared to talk about why they should believe you are reformed, but most people don't have such a thing in their past that they should find.