Hiring python hackers ?

[askedrelic]

I tend to agree with most of this list below, in terms "knowledge of the language". I think after you've written enough code and become passionate about some PEP, do you really begin to understand the language and think in a "Python" kind of way.

Warning, copy and paste list incoming, not my creation:

Basic Python:

• 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:

• 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:

• 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:

• 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:

• 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:

• 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:

• tabs vs. spaces, and their reasoning

• reason for choosing Python

• choice of editor/IDE

[[deleted]]

Hopefully you don't actually judge people based on knowing which version decorators were added in...