So the other day, as I was doing a Google Search (can’t exactly remember what it was that I was searching for but it was machine learning related), up pops this invitation to participate in a challenge.
Turned out to be the Google Foobar challenge, Google’s secret recruiting tool. (Its existence is not really a secret, so I am not really revealing any great secrets here.)
Though I have no plans to become a Google employee (and I doubt they’re interested in me on account of my age anyway) I decided to go through the challenge because, well, it’s hard to say no to a challenge, and it was an opportunity to practice my Python skills (which need a lot of practice, because I have not yet used Python that much.)
Well, I did it. It was fun.
More importantly, I enjoyed it just as much as I enjoyed similar challenges as a math geek in my early teens. And if that’s not a gift from life, I don’t know what it is.
And yes, I am now much better at Python than I was just a few days ago. I certainly appreciate why the language has become popular, though I can also see its non-trivial pitfalls.
What are the non-trivial pitfalls of Python?
For instance, it’s a type-less language, which makes it very easy to use but also very easy to make mistakes that a strongly typed compiler/interpreter would catch readily.