Python Interview Questions and Answers 2

Basic Python:
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- do they know a tuple/list/dict when they see it?

- when to use list vs. tuple vs. dict. vs. set

- can they use list comprehensions (and know when not to abuse them? :)

- can they use tuple unpacking for assignment?

- string building...do they use "+=" or do they build a list and use .join() to recombine them efficiently

- truth-value testing questions and observations (do they write "if x == True" or do they just write "if x")

- basic file-processing (iterating over a file's lines)

- basic understanding of exception handling

Broader Basic Python:
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- questions about the standard library ("do you know if  there's a standard library for doing X?", or "in which
library would you find [common functionality Y]?") Most of these are related to the more common libraries such as
os/os.path/sys/re/itertools

- questions about iterators/generators

- questions about map/reduce/sum/etc family of functions

- questions about "special" methods (__<foo>__)

More Advanced Python:
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- can they manipulate functions as first-class objects (Python makes it easy, but do they know how)

- more detailed questions about the std. libraries (such as datetime/email/csv/zipfile/networking/optparse/unittest)

- questions about testing (unittests/doctests)

- questions about docstrings vs. comments, and the "Why" of them

- more detailed questions about regular expressions

- questions about mutability

- keyword/list parameters and unpacked kwd args

- questions about popular 3rd-party toolkits (BeautifulSoup, pyparsing...mostly if they know about them and when to use them, not so much about implementation details)

- questions about monkey-patching

- questions about PDB

- questions about properties vs. getters/setters

- questions about classmethods

- questions about scope/name-resolution

- use of lambda

Python History:
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- decorators added in which version?

- "batteries included" SQL-capible DB in which version?

- the difference between "class Foo" and "class Foo(object)"

- questions from "import this" about pythonic code

Python Resources:
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- what do they know about various Python web frameworks (knowing a few names is usually good enough, though  knowledge about the frameworks is a nice plus) such as
Django, TurboGears, Zope, etc.

- what do they know about various Python GUI frameworks and the pros/cons of them (tkinter, wx, pykde, etc)

- where do they go with Python related questions (c.l.p, google, google-groups, etc)

Other Process-releated things:
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- do they use revision control (RCS/CVS/Subversion/Mercurial/Git...anything but VSS) and know how to use it well

- do they write automated tests for their code

Touchy-feely things:
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- tabs vs. spaces, and their reasoning

- reason for choosing Python

- choice of editor/IDE