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Comment by denzil_correa | Hacker News Reader

One of my colleagues was taking an interview of a potential candidate who listed "Python" as a core programming language. This is similar to most interviews I've been part of. Here's how it went -

Interviewer : Name some data structures in Python Interviewee : Same as C, C++

Interviewer : Can you name some specific data structures? For example, have you heard about lists? Interviewee : I haven't heard about lists in Python

Interviewer : What is the key difference between Python and C? Interviewee : Python requires indentation, C doesn't.

That was the final straw in my colleague's patience.

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I once had a experience with a colleague. She would continually come to me to parse XMLs and give it to her in some format like a csv which she could open it in Microsoft excel for some report generation purposes.

It started to happen pretty frequently and would consume a great deal of my time- It was reaching a stage where I had to stop my work to do her's. After a time she would just show up at my desk with her laptop, I had to write the code while she chatted with some one on her mobile. One afternoon I had, had enough and I asked her why she couldn't do it herself. She then mentioned she only knew C and C++. Then I asked why couldn't she parse the XMLs in C or C++? After a few questions back and forth, she understood I wasn't going to her homework after all.

She shed enough tears to convince our project manager, that I wasn't a good team player and I was the reason why the productivity in the project was falling down.

Thankfully one afternoon our clients had her removed from the project when I was on leave, and they made her write programs in a war room while the whole team was watching her screen on a projector.

That seems like a pretty brutal way to treat someone. Not that I'm excusing their behaviour.

Why would your colleague waste time on further questions when the interviewee answered that he hasn't heard of lists in python?

btw Python's indentation requirement is a difference with C though whether it's a key difference or not is debatable.

Given all of the differences between Python and C, I don't think it's even debatable whether or not the indentation rules in Python are the key difference. I'd say that typing and interpreted vs compiled are both so much more important.

I would have gone with object orientation myself, and a de jure standard library ( but then i am an old bloke from the days before C had a std lib :-)

But i have to admit that most python programs are a joy to read ( thanks to guido's insistence on indentation as part of the specs ) whereas most real-world C code is just horrible ( even code i had written a few years back )

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