I’m a product manager, not a developer, although I used to be a developer a long time ago in a language far far away.
A few months before my last interview I had taken up Python by solving about fifty projecteuler.net problems. I’m not fluent, but capable, and since no one is hiring me to write code anyway, I put it on my resume.
At my interview with a CTO he said, I see you have Python on your resume? “Yep,” I answered, and said pretty much the above.
“Do you mind if I open a shared session to code in”
“Sure” (I haven’t coded in front of someone…ever?)
“Do you know what Fibonacci numbers are?”
“Yes”
“Can you write me a function to return the Nth Fibonacci?”
That’s clearly not a very hard task, and fortunately I was up to the task and got the job.