Unexpected Results When Sorting a List of Dictionaries by Multiple Keys in Python
I'm migrating some code and I'm converting an old project and I'm experiencing unexpected results when trying to sort a list of dictionaries in Python by multiple keys. My dataset contains dictionaries representing employees, each with `name`, `age`, and `salary` fields. I need to sort the list first by `age` (ascending) and then by `salary` (descending) if the ages are the same. Here's the code snippet I am using: ```python employees = [ {'name': 'Alice', 'age': 30, 'salary': 70000}, {'name': 'Bob', 'age': 25, 'salary': 50000}, {'name': 'Charlie', 'age': 30, 'salary': 60000}, {'name': 'David', 'age': 25, 'salary': 75000} ] sorted_employees = sorted(employees, key=lambda x: (x['age'], -x['salary'])) ``` However, the output I get seems to be inconsistent: ```python [ {'name': 'Charlie', 'age': 30, 'salary': 60000}, {'name': 'Alice', 'age': 30, 'salary': 70000}, {'name': 'Bob', 'age': 25, 'salary': 50000}, {'name': 'David', 'age': 25, 'salary': 75000} ] ``` I expected Charlie to come after Alice since he has a lower salary. I've confirmed that the `salary` values are correct, but the sorting seems to be invalid. Moreover, I am using Python 3.8. Is there something I'm missing in the sorting logic? Any insights on why the order isn't as I anticipated would be greatly appreciated. This is happening in both development and production on macOS. What are your experiences with this? I've been using Python for about a year now.