Comment by Sesse__
18 hours ago
> Of course when the interviewer asks me to use "any language", I'll assume they want Python or Java or C++ or Rust, not Bash or ALGOL 68.
When I did interviews, I used to ask for “any imperative language”. Most people chose C or Java, some chose e.g. Python and the best solutions looked very different from the C/Java ones. I did not deduct points for either; a good solution is a good solution.
I once had a candidate that chose Oberon, because it was the only language they felt comfortable with (by their own account). They fell through on the interview for other reasons, but this seriously made me consider to what degree they had any programming experience at all outside a few select school assignments.
Independent of that, if someone came with a solution in a constraint solver, my next question would be (as it usually was, regardless of approach) “and what is the runtime complexity of your solution?” and I'd be impressed if they had any nonobvious thoughts about that!
Even in most used languages it's hard to be accurate without making profiling. And when using a framework, it's almost a garantee that you have no idea of the complexity under the hood of all the facilities you rely on.