Python Interview Questions

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Tue, 10 Jul 2012 11:29:24 +0200, Jean-Michel Pichavant wrote:

> Why would you want to hire someone that knows something pointless as the
> version where feature X has been introduced ? Just tell him that feature
> X has been introducted in version Y, costless 2.5sec training. Don't you
> want to hire someone that knows things you don't and benefit from each
> others abilities, learning from each others, improving the company
> global skill range ?

The reason for the question is to get some idea of how well the candidate 
actually knows Python. If you ask them questions that you don't know the 
answer to, how will you tell if they're right?

I certainly wouldn't disqualify a candidate if they didn't know what 
version introduced (say) decorators. If they said "what's a decorator?" 
or "version 10", that would be a hint that they don't actually know much 
about Python. If they said "I don't know, I'm still stuck on Python 2.3", 
they would get a point for honesty and lose a point for being way out of 
date. If they said version 2.3 or 2.5 (it's actually 2.4), well, that's 
close enough.

Of course, an acceptable answer would be "buggered if I know, but if you 
give me a minute, I'll google it for you".


-- 
Steven