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At what level would you test an interviewee with this kind of question: Python guru, Python expert, Python ninja, Python rockstar, or merely "is familiar with P

At what level would you test an interviewee with this kind of question: Python guru, Python expert, Python ninja, Python rockstar, or merely "is familiar with Python"? Your example is a very common gotcha that has been covered ad nauseam, but IMO it's still the kind of bug that would be caught immediately in code review and is very easily fixed.

lilsunnybee 12y ago
I thought we were past using trick questions like this anyways! Since, you know, it would be easy for an experienced yet anxious programmer to get tripped up on this, but someone who just browsed "python interview questions 101" to breeze on through. Also it selects against experienced multi-language developers, since language-specific quirks like this are not generally useful information to keep front-loaded, but are trivial to become re-familiar with in a work environment, or even gasp learn for the first time from a co-worker or helpful article. If the industry as a whole cared about evidence-based, non-superstitious, non-monoculture-reinforcing hiring practices, we'd realize that tripping people up and judging programming capability based on minutia is as unfair as it is self-defeating.
SEJeff 12y ago
I don't use this as a trick question. I ask them to describe mutable vs immutable objects and gotchas. Then I write this function and ask them to describe in excruciating detail what it does, why, and how. It is simply a easy way to gauge a candidate's proficiency with the language. It also helps if they know that this is a problem. You'd be shocked to know a lot of people on the market for jobs writing python don't get this question correct, but the smart ones often do when talking through it even if they didn't originally.
yoo-interested 12y ago
I think the idea is to see whether the interviewee is a kind of person who always googles and reads on "gotchas of language X" whenever he/she learns X.

lilsunnybee 12y ago

I thought we were past using trick questions like this anyways! Since, you know, it would be easy for an experienced yet anxious programmer to get tripped up on this, but someone who just browsed "python interview questions 101" to breeze on through. Also it selects against experienced multi-language developers, since language-specific quirks like this are not generally useful information to keep front-loaded, but are trivial to become re-familiar with in a work environment, or even gasp learn for the first time from a co-worker or helpful article. If the industry as a whole cared about evidence-based, non-superstitious, non-monoculture-reinforcing hiring practices, we'd realize that tripping people up and judging programming capability based on minutia is as unfair as it is self-defeating.

SEJeff 12y ago

I don't use this as a trick question. I ask them to describe mutable vs immutable objects and gotchas. Then I write this function and ask them to describe in excruciating detail what it does, why, and how. It is simply a easy way to gauge a candidate's proficiency with the language. It also helps if they know that this is a problem. You'd be shocked to know a lot of people on the market for jobs writing python don't get this question correct, but the smart ones often do when talking through it even if they didn't originally.

yoo-interested 12y ago

I think the idea is to see whether the interviewee is a kind of person who always googles and reads on "gotchas of language X" whenever he/she learns X.