I've been preparing in Java but there is so much boilerplate code, thinking about switching to Python just for interview purposes #leetcode #facebook #amazon #apple #google
The interviewer might think you are not comfortable in your primary language Java.
I don't think it's worth it, you wouldn't be as familiar with it as someone who uses it day to day and it may take you longer than if you just wrote Java. Also one disadvantage of python is the lack of self balancing binary tree in the library.
Nah. If you don’t know it already, just stick to Java
I use JS and whenever there’s a question where I could use a library not available in JS, I ask the interviewer if we could pretend a library was available for me to use. They’re usually okay with that since it’s not central to the actual problem
My experience is pretty much the same.
Learn Python if you’re interested but for interviewing you want to use the language you know the best.
So the fangs still use Java in their day to day operation? Are a majority of the projects at the fangs written in Java or python?
No way. You could mess up just because of your lack of exp. java all the way. No one cares. Lang choice should be based on your best proficiency. Focus on taking advantage of the data structures in your #1 to cleverly solve problems and the algorithms associated with their traversal and manipulation. It doesn’t matter if another language could solve something more elegantly. The boilerplate doesn’t matter either. They may ask you to skip or abbreviate that stuff anyway.
In my experience interviewing, candidates who code in Python tend to perform worse, mainly because they don't understand the internals of the language, and lack knowledge of data structures
What about rockstar python programmers? Does that fact that they use Python make them lose points/look unfavorable
Not at all, you're not penalized because of the language you choose