Not sure if that example helps. You can make any programming language hard to read without some basic formatting. The way I would write the sexpr would be:
(impl
(impl
p
(impl q r))
(impl
(impl p q)
(impl p r)))
It's clear when each section begins and ends and doesn't require complex parsing rules.
Yes, software is full of ambiguities but there are methods we use to handle them. OP emailed an outline wanting feedback, as any team player would do to iron out ambiguities, and received a meaningless reply. I think it's safe to say companies don't want their engineers going into a corner never to be seen again for 2 weeks, which is what this interview process recreates.
I remember reading someone's shower thoughts that if the internet was completely safe there would be no need for Cloudflare, so it's in Cloudflare's best interest to keep the internet unsafe. It's an interesting thought even if a bit tinfoil hat-esque.
I could imagine more sophisticated crawlers might be able to detect false information and then avoid those pages, but maybe that's more far fetched than how it comes across in my mind.
I agree that it's good they looked passed typical corporate reasons. I admit it's still strange to see.
At the end of the day, companies like Microsoft are in the business of making money and that's one of the reasons they made C#. If they don't see the profit in using one of their own products (and one that competes with Go) in their future products then why would I use them for mine?
It's like if they used Google Cloud instead of Azure, it'd be very weird.
Normally I don't think anyone would be losing their mind, but this is a Microsoft team creating a widely popular Microsoft product and they use a Google product (Go) instead of using another Microsoft product (C#) that is arguably competing with it. It strikes as odd why a Microsoft team isn't comfortable with/trusting a Microsoft product.
I think it makes sense that some people are taking this in a way that maybe they shouldn't trust in C#'s future either.
It's clear when each section begins and ends and doesn't require complex parsing rules.