[commandlinefan]

> I would be extremely reluctant to determine this guy can't deliver good code

See, I’d be extremely reluctant to assume the opposite - that he can, even though he doesn’t remember “len”. Given this one bit of information, all I know is that he has exactly one thing in common with everybody who doesn’t know how to program in Python: he doesn’t know the function for determining the length of a string. Now, he may (somehow?) know everything else about Python except for that one thing: I’m assuming the interviewer was a bit surprised (as I would be) that somebody presenting themselves as a Python programmer didn’t know len, but went ahead and asked him a few more questions which he may well have nailed. If the answer to every question was “I don’t know, I have to look it up”, you’d pass on him, too. I just can’t picture how anybody who didn’t remember that could remember much else, but I guess that’s why job interviews last an hour or so.

[lleolin]

>See, I’d be extremely reluctant to assume >Given this one bit of information, all I know

This seems like a really flawed way of approaching most things. Why assume anything? And if you're going to assume anything, why only factor in that one bit of information, and not any other context. How about the fact that he's been coding for 30 years and works at Google. Is that also relevant?

>I’m assuming the interviewer was a bit surprised

There was no interviewer in this situation. His tweet was not in regards to any interview. Did you read the article?

>If the answer to every question was “I don’t know, I have to look it up”, you’d pass on him, too.

But if I were to do so, at least in such a case I would be basing my suppositions on more than just one thing.