[khedoros]

I had a similar experience (and result) recently, although it was my first time interviewing with Google, and I did my coding in Python. I want able to get any detail whatsoever about why I was rejected; the feedback Vijay got would have been appreciated!

[bogomipz]

Isn't Python a decent choice for whiteboarding algorithms style interviews? Visually Python is quite streamlined and also Python alleviates having to write a bunch of boilerplate. I'm curious why using Python would be an issue for a Google type interview?

It was my understanding that one of the reasons for these style interviews was to get away from being language specific - in other words if someone has good CS fundamentals, and could reason about different problem spaces that they could probably pick up any language. Is this no longer true?

[khedoros]

Yes, I think it's decent (and that's the reason I chose it). I don't think it was an issue in my interview process; I was just trying to say that I had a similar experience to the OP, but I also wanted to mention some differences.

Google's questions tend to be about data structures and algorithms, and fairly language-agnostic (although you're expected to know the language that you choose well, and use it elegantly).

[gbin]

Using Python for an interview at Giogle is absolutely not a problem. Source: I interview candidates there.

[bogomipz]

Thank for the feedback, at some point though is that looked down upon if the candidate isn't also equally fluent in at least Java and C++?

[slevin063]

In my experience, they were language agnostic till it is high level. Unfortunately I use C at my work place, embedded C to be exact :)

[thefastlane]

the practice (generally) at present is that you are asked to choose a specific language ahead of time from a list the recruiter offers you. python is one of them, so is C++. but many languages aren't. for example, you could not go in and do your interview with, say, OCaml or Clojure.