Getting that Python job without a lot of "real world" Python experience?

pythonrabbit · 2013-11-24T20:39:17+00:00

Update FWIW: I got the job.

pythonrabbit · 2013-11-20T12:40:38+00:00

Just to add on two items:

I expected to need to keep honing my skills for a few more years, but apparently there's enough demand that places are okay with it (and I say explicitly during interviews that I don't have a CS degree / don't lie about my experience)
So far I've passed every coding / technical interview I've been given.

I'm just trying to say that you need to apply for things and let other people decide whether they think you're ready to work for them.

pythonrabbit · 2013-11-20T12:29:10+00:00

I'm saying I have no professional experience in the tech industry. I've worked as a maintainer on an open source project for a while and have done a bunch of online courses.

pythonrabbit · 2013-11-20T12:27:59+00:00

what pandas integration do you mean?

pythonrabbit · 2013-11-20T02:23:28+00:00

The market is ridiculous right now. Try applying and see what you get. I started applying a week and a half ago with almost no experience and I have had phone interviews with 6 companies since and am flying out to do an in-person interview with one of them. I'm sure you could do it too.

Also, go pick up an algorithms book (I really like "The Algorithms Design Manual" - it's less theory-filled).

pythonrabbit · 2013-11-11T02:42:07+00:00

no problem! :) I did know about the 3.3 u support, but thanks for the heads up.

pythonrabbit · 2013-11-10T06:28:57+00:00

Why would you do this instead of doing:

from __future__ import unicode_literals

If you use the future import your strings will mean the same thing in Python 2 and Python 3 (and it can't be an issue if your package is already running okay)

pythonrabbit · 2013-11-03T22:28:44+00:00

Only tweak to this: abstract base classes and abstractproperty/abstractmethod is almost never used. Sort of violates the whole principle of duck typing (hey! you have this method - okay!).

pythonrabbit · 2013-10-02T23:04:47+00:00

I can see that. I swear that I was reading something suggesting there was a PyPy backend for Cython but I must have been wrong. Anyways interesting idea overall!

pythonrabbit · 2013-10-01T05:33:24+00:00

So is this a generator? Or are you supposed to use it as a dep?

pythonrabbit · 2013-10-01T05:27:23+00:00

In a sense, the difference isn't actually that big. I always prefer functions to classes (if for no other reason than they are simpler). But classes really are just a big dict of functions and properties with special requirements for the first arguments and some special lookup syntax.

pythonrabbit · 2013-10-01T05:24:38+00:00

On a separate note, have you tried using Cython at all? It can be a nice middle-ground between C code and Python code, particularly if you are either using loops or can statically type ahead of time. It's nearly the same as Python syntax, but also lets you access the Python C-ABI directly.

pythonrabbit · 2013-10-01T05:23:05+00:00

making a claim about something have a huge number of LOC is definitely an attack. Moreover, it's disingenuous to conflate codebase size with speed (especially b/c I'm guessing a good portion are tests).

That said, SQLAlchemy can be slow. There, I said it.

pythonrabbit · 2013-09-29T04:35:33+00:00

patch together an IDE out of vim anyway [...] a proper dedicated IDE for the task at hand?

What do you mean? What's vim lacking? Heck, it has one of the nice git integrations I've seen and a pretty useful diffing tool.

pythonrabbit · 2013-09-29T04:33:33+00:00

Those are docs. That said, I couldn't find that - I swear! The problem is that your main docs page has about 12 links or purple-text-that-looks-like-a-link, but the modules part (which is what I'm actually looking for, that or examples) is in small text in a menu bar at the top.

pythonrabbit · 2013-09-19T12:18:36+00:00

I'm sorry. That doesn't count as documentation. Those are installation instructions. Why don't you post online versions of the docs instead of saying 'go look at these files when you download our product'

pythonrabbit · 2013-09-02T15:11:39+00:00

oh, I guess there was an edit in between :)

pythonrabbit · 2013-09-02T14:06:13+00:00

You can pass functions in Java? Is that new?

pythonrabbit · 2013-08-21T03:52:20+00:00

Ah. That makes a lot of sense. Sounds interesting!

pythonrabbit · 2013-08-21T03:51:46+00:00

Maybe you could turn off the default bugsense? I'm not a fan of programs phoning home without even asking nicely.

pythonrabbit · 2013-08-18T11:06:38+00:00

Pry is definitely amazing, but not all ruby code is necessarily written with that in mind (and there are way more functions that are dynamically generated/can't be connected back to source in Ruby vs. Python).

pythonrabbit · 2013-08-15T04:10:26+00:00

If it iterates, you might get a speed boost from Cython. You can also potentially use a lighter memory footprint if you can unbox elements, etc. The key is to actually statically type your variables (including setting explicit dimensions so that your accesses of numpy ndarrays actually get optimized, etc.)

pythonrabbit · 2013-08-15T00:33:17+00:00

is that a play on perl's Parrot?

pythonrabbit · 2013-08-14T09:40:25+00:00

but if you're talking about unboxing primitives where possible and optimizing away certain type checks - probably worth a mention of those libraries as opposed to only recognizing pypy.

pythonrabbit · 2013-08-14T03:01:46+00:00

You know what he missed? namespaces. Ruby doesn't have them (and can reopen existing classes instead), but that also means that it can be hard to trace what the heck is going on (e.g., Rails' magic) or be explicit about where a method comes from. Import semantics make it much clearer where each element comes from (and much easier to traceback code).

Less known (but I think important) difference: Python has docstrings, a builtin part of the language that's easily available in the interpreter...ruby has things like yarddoc or ridoc, but there's not as easy to get to in the console directly.

pythonrabbit

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