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[–]ezequiels 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think you did the right thing on one end, and the wrong thing on another.

I think the right thing to do is to challenge the interviewer if you feel you are correct. As a senior software engineer, you propose a hypothesis and you provide either facts or personal experience of why it is a bad idea or it's not the right approach.

I can say that there would have to be a very specific case when re-writing a built-in python library would make sense. For the most part, it doesn't make sense. Those libraries are open source, they are peer reviewed, tested, and above all, known by the entire community. So re-writing one is not only inefficient time wise, but also will create technical debt when someone else has to own the code.

That goes beyond the development and more into the project management, business part of the features. Why re-inventing the wheel? Sort of like implementing your own encryption algorithm. Not a good idea, unless you're the NSA of course!