I applied using a lecturer's contact with a previous student at my college. A few weeks later, I received a phone-call interview with a manager. He asked me a few basic questions about my studies and the projects I had completed. Before the call ended, he told me he was going to email an official invite for an interview (which was scheduled for the next day). The email never arrived before nearing the end of the day, which led me to send a polite reminder by email. He replied that he was going to send it but AGAIN failed to send me the invitation and directions to the interview location. This was annoying, but I let it pass.

Regardless, the next day I went to the interview ahead of time, arriving half an hour early. The manager met me at the agreed-upon time and brought me into a room with another interviewer, a software engineer. The interview began well, with the manager asking me a few questions about my life and studies. For the next half-hour, the engineer ran down a list of questions relating to my skills, most of which I answered correctly. Meanwhile, the manager seemed to tune out and type non-stop emails while I answered the engineer's questions.

During the last part of the interview, the engineer asked me to solve a programming problem using a recursive function written in pseudo-code in Python. Unfortunately, I couldn't solve it because it was something my college course never taught us in the limited time we had to learn Python (I completed a one-year conversion diploma course). Clearly, this was a significant knowledge gap that I hadn't realized until then.

The interview abruptly ended after that. The interviewers were already leaving the conference room before I had even time to compose myself. They didn't even ask the typical question of "Do you have any questions?" to ethically end the interview. The engineer left the room to return to his desk without even shaking my hand or saying goodbye after the interview. The walk back to reception was particularly uneasy as the manager was quiet and didn't say much until he shook my hand as I left.

Overall, the experience left me in a bad mood for the rest of the day. The unprofessional nature of the manager and his engineer was frustrating. I was told I would hear back a few days later, but it's now weeks later, and I haven't received any email since.

Can you solve this Python script problem using a recursive function instead of loops?