Checking if two strings are permutations (anagrams) in Python Practicing for my interview, I am working on some problems in Python.

This problem is to decide two strings are permutation (or anagrams) of each each other.

def is_permutation(first, second):
    if len(first) != len(second):
        return False
    first_arr = [0 for i in range(256)] # ASCII size
    second_arr = [0 for i in range(256)] # ASCII size
    for i in range(len(first)):
        first_arr[ord(first[i])] += 1
        second_arr[ord(second[i])] += 1
    if first_arr != second_arr:
        return False
    else:
        return True


I feel this code can be more efficient, but I cannot make it. Can anybody give me advice or tip so that I can improve please?
From Sumit Raj's 2015 article 10 Neat Python Tricks Beginners Should Know, which I would classify as "more pythonic":

from collections import Counter
def is_anagram(str1, str2):
    return Counter(str1) == Counter(str2)
&gt;&gt;&gt; is_anagram('abcd','dbca')
True
&gt;&gt;&gt; is_anagram('abcd','dbaa')
False