Is there evidence that programmers who use [] simply cannot ever learn to use .get()? Once they have picked up the incorrect approach, their brains are simply broken and they can never learn that a different solution exists that is better used in certain situations?
It would obviously be risky to hire someone who uses [] if that's the case.
If not, though, it seems like it doesn't provide much of a clue as to the person's ability to perform in a technical role.
Learn! You aren't hiring people to learn. They must know everything they will ever need on day 1. (Forget what it says about your company - you only do things that people at other companies have been doing for years...)
I once got rejected because my solution to an interview question didn't use recursion. I had spent the previous 5 years doing embedded work on hardware where stack overflow was a real possibility - we had a real aversion to recursion if we could avoid it.
Fortunately I was in a situation where I'm not too bothered about not getting the job but admittedly it would have been nice to have this chat with them.
I am _very_ familiar with the advantages and disadvantages of both approaches and would, of course, adapt to house style, but where I am now we set up a nice pipeline in Dagster with a whole lot of boxes for assets, and at the risk of being non-technical I want the box with the bug to be the one that turns red. If I use x[] I get that. If I use x.get the red box could be three modules downstream because of a NoneType Exception.
It’s a take-home test. I’m saying if the particular test called for dealing with a particular type of input and you didn’t do it, you failed. It’s that simple.
If it didn’t, then it’s a pointless nitpick and shouldn’t ever be brought up as interview feedback.
Is there evidence that programmers who use [] simply cannot ever learn to use .get()? Once they have picked up the incorrect approach, their brains are simply broken and they can never learn that a different solution exists that is better used in certain situations?
It would obviously be risky to hire someone who uses [] if that's the case.
If not, though, it seems like it doesn't provide much of a clue as to the person's ability to perform in a technical role.