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Ask HN: How best to prepare for Python interviews starting in 3 months?

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Re: Ask HN: How best to prepare for Python interviews starting in 3 months?

#31
> ...How should he best use his time?

Making switch to Python is rather a broad goal. It's just a tool, and as any tool it's used for a purpose and often along with other tools.

If he aims at any entry level coding position, then likely it'd be more about entry level, than proficiency. Basically, testing the discipline and analytical thinking (thus all puzzle and algo problems, dreadful leetcode etc).

If he plans to leverage his present skillset and experience, then in that alloted time I'd try to implement some aspects of his present job projects in Python (if such aspects are mappable, of course). General goal is to try and fuse his present experience with the newly acquired knowledge of Python (a known problem and solution, just a new tool).

Again, it does not need to be grand, just some specific aspect, say, parsing args or a configuation file, or grabbing something from a database, or triggering some process based on some config, logging something, wrapping his code for reuse or installation etc. Whatever he is familiar with in his job responsibilities.

The goal is to get used to the new tool, know what it takes for it to become useful at his level of experience.

Eventually, he could (in a stretch, perhaps) claim of trying to apply or evaluate the use of Python in his current job scope. This could count more, than just leetcoding ability, which may still be a barrier to get through, however, depending on the chosen companies.

Good luck to him!

Re: Ask HN: How best to prepare for Python interviews starting in 3 months?

#32
If he's read a few books and knows generators, etc, then I suggest:

"Python Cookbook", which shows you how to do many things (files, networks, servers, binary, data handling). It effectively is a cookbook and helps you have or be aware of several "recipes" to do common things.

To write better Python: Brett Slatkin's "Effective Python: [59|90] Specific Ways to Write Better Python" will get him to write good quality Python code "in general". This could reassure potential employers to some degree.

Having some familiarity or experience with the domain of the organization helps. Python is Python, but there are several subtleties in working writing code that encodes to/decodes from binary packets, or with systems work, or audio processing, etc.

It will depend on whether these companies want someone who "can code", or someone who "can code in Python", or "someone who can code X in Python because that's we're doing X in Python".

Re: Ask HN: How best to prepare for Python interviews starting in 3 months?

#33
post #22

Some excellent suggestions here. For learning, exercism.io is amazing: they assign people as mentors to review your code, and I've had really good experiences while learning Rust, with feedback calibrated nicely to my level of expertise. For how to think about algorithmic interviews, I always recommend this short set of notes: http://courses.csail.mit.edu/iap/interview/materials.php For fun, try Advent of Code this y…

I registered at exercism.io as a mentor to help other people. Thank you for sharing!

Re: Ask HN: How best to prepare for Python interviews starting in 3 months?

#34
In addition to finding a cool tutorial site, I have a less exciting recommendation: spend some time reading the reference documentation. This will give him a sense of the scope of the language, the difference between core language and library features, and most of all, a bit of direction for how to help himself find answers as he progresses out of the absolute beginner phase.

The standard docs don't get recommended to beginners very often because they are not designed to be fun/motivating like learning sites, but provided that the student is intrinsically motivated, I think it can be exciting to look at all the modules and start to learn about all the things that people have built and provide for the programmer. Learning to navigate the reference material is an important skill. Some of the sections are confusing, dry, and unhelpful. Others are very worthwhile and knowing where they are is important.

Python in particular has a large standard library, much of which is quite old (good in that it is very mature, not so good in that some of it is barely relevant any more). I've been programming python for a decade and I look at the standard docs every day for something. `stdtypes.html` is kind of a big mess but at some point you have to learn most of what is in there.

If I were hiring a programmer, one of the things I would try to evaluate would be their basic research skills.

Re: Ask HN: How best to prepare for Python interviews starting in 3 months?

#35

I like the Python course on HackerRank. I did all the problems. I had some Python experience already but I learned a lot. It felt like climbing a mountain but I found it was frictionless and fun the whole way. I printed out the completion certificate I got. (I did the Java course and some other courses and they were not as good.) If your friend wants to keep doing work like the work your friend has been doing in Alte…

what's the python course? link? I can only find challenges in python..

Re: Ask HN: How best to prepare for Python interviews starting in 3 months?

#37

If you have 3-months - https://pythonmorsels.com has been a godsend for me when drilling on the fundamentals of the python language. I guarantee that if you are relatively new to the language, that you won't run out of (A) Interesting exercises, (B) Fundamental language concepts in less than 30-45 days, even spending 2-3 hours/day. Just knock off 1 or 2 a day, and then come back a couple days later, and, without chec…

I assume you're talking about the pro plan and not the lite plan?

Yeah - whatever plan lets you draw from his full library. Best education money I've ever spent in my life.

Re: Ask HN: How best to prepare for Python interviews starting in 3 months?

#38
I really like jetbrains academy courses[1]. Their subscription is quite expensive but some courses are free and they have 2 months free trial.

Courses are project based. You are doing some small programing project. You will learn both theoretical and practical knowledge to be able to successfully finish it. Their courses are integrated into jetbrains IDEs or you can use web version.

i.e. See projects from "python core track" https://hyperskill.org/tracks/2/projects

[1] https://www.jetbrains.com/academy/

Re: Ask HN: How best to prepare for Python interviews starting in 3 months?

#39
i'm curious if leetcode or other similar gives you a competency level after you do two or three questions.

like, on a 1-10 scale, you're a 5. or a leetcode-5.

as opposed to, how good are you at python?

oh, well, i can usually do leetcode difficult questions without too much difficulty until they involve floating regressive recusions, in which case i'm a little bit more middle-to difficult completing sort of.

sure you can't measure communication abilities, etc., but you should be able to measure pure mastery of a language, then maybe with an algo addition, etc.

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