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

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

#1

Post by Takizawamura »

My friend works in a bank and for a long time has wanted to make the switch to Python. To date, he has read a few books and knows some intermediate concepts, such as closures, generators, etc.. Outside of Python, he has built workflows in Alteryx and knows some SQL.

His teenage son challenged him to start applying for roles in 3 calendar months from now. He figures he can dedicate a max of 3 hours per day. How should he best use his time?

Should he drill on Leetcode? Build a small portfolio? Gain a specialization within Python? How best would you allocate his hours?

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

#2

Post by PaulHoule »

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 Alteryx, your friend should learn Jupyter, Pandas, and scikit-learn.

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

#3

Post by sebg »

1) look for python jobs (https://www.indeed.com/q-Python-jobs.html?vjk=91c523abc4708c...) or (https://www.python.org/jobs/)

2) figure out what roles he'd want to apply to

3) figure out what python knowledge / tools he's expected to know

4) find project tutorials that use that knowledge / tools

5) reach out to the companies saying what he's doing and if they have any suggestions

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

#4

Post by hermitcrab »

PaulHoule wrote: post #2

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…

Climbing a frictionless mountain sounds really difficult. ;0)

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

#7

Post by PaulHoule »

hermitcrab wrote: post #4
PaulHoule wrote: post #2

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…

Climbing a frictionless mountain sounds really difficult. ;0)

There's a contradiction there I grant, but by "frictionless" I mean I didn't fight with the environment at all.

I'd contrast that to the Java course where you learn the strange dialect of "single file Java" where you might write a single main() method or write only static methods. If you need to you can write as many classes in a single file, but only one can be public, unless they are inner methods. You probably don't need public methods.

It's a strange enough world and distant from ordinary Java coding, yet kinda fun and helpful for mastering whiteboard interviews.

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

#9

Post by amoorthy »

I did the Udacity courses on full stack web-dev in ~2 months. Really good though I have a CS background so I knew some of the concepts (haven't coded in 20 years though). The very first intro CS course is really well done and all exercises are in python. The rest are not as good but still worth going through.

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

#10

Post by funnyflamigo »

It's heavily domain dependent IMO.

Leetcode only gets you pass the first round of interviews and not every company does them. I consider these useless textbook problems but you'll need them to get the job. They won't help you much in the job.

More importantly (imo) he needs domain specific knowledge. I.e. if it's going to be web development then he needs to start a web project with the backend in python. If it's stats/analysis he needs to start on analysis projects. Etc.

My advice is on making small projects that cover topics he'll be working on in the jobs he applies for to build a small portfolio. And brush up on the leetcode like a month before.

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