

My favorite question to the programming language expert - npcomplete
https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140616044428-1804358-my-favorite-question-to-the-programming-language-expert

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dpritchett
I feel like "my favorite interpreted language is slow" is a bit of a cop-out.
Granted, it's the first thing that comes to mind when I try to enumerate the
things I dislike about working in Ruby, but it's not really an interesting
answer.

I might point to simple aesthetic things like JSON-style hashes of symbols
looking funny:

    
    
        example = { a: :b }
        => { a: :b }
        example[:a]
        => :b
    

Or maybe "the way it imports things mean I wind up grepping code / googling
docs rather than just looking at the top of the calling file to see the origin
of an imported object, and then sometimes I find myself over-stating the
namespace for an object just so Ruby won't get it wrong". Compare to python:

    
    
       from big_library import named_method
    

I suppose it's a pretty good question and a reasonable proxy for "so you have
actually worked in this language for many, many hours, right?"

------
lsh123
This is a great question as long as the interviewer is prepared that the reply
might not necessarily match his/her opinion. Otherwise, the interview might
end up in a ugly discussion of two opinionated people.

EDIT: fixed stupid typo

~~~
npcomplete
Absolutely. There's nothing wrong with differing from the interviewer so long
as you can clearly articulate the issue.

