Python Interview Questions

Python Interview Questions and Answers

Disclaimer: These interview questions and answers and any material presented here is for educational purposes only. You and yourself alone are responsible for your performance in any interviews that you attend. Remember, that the answers are simple, and the candidate should personalize it based on their specific experience and project details.

This article contains a huge list of commonly asked basic Python interview questions, the programmatic interview questions where you need write code, and advanced interview questions based on core Python skills.

We are adding many new interview questions regularly to this article, so that it would help you keep updated for the interviews.

Interview Questions based on your Experience

Now, that you will be interviewed based on your skills in Python, following are some of the most general questions that you could expect about your experience in Python.

1. Can you tell me about a Python project you have worked on in recently?

Your answer should be about

Give a brief description about the project. The type of project, like web application, GUI application, or server application, etc. And also mention the libraries you have used.

Answer

For example, "I worked on a project called 'Customer Analytics Dashboard. It was a web application that aimed to provide data-driven insights for our clients. We have used Flask library in the project."

2. What was your role in the project, and what were the main challenges you faced?

Your answer should be about

Your exact role in the project, not the designation you have in the company. And the challenges should be related to something that can be acceptable.

Answer

For example, "My role in the project was to develop the backend logic and APIs using Python and Flask. The main challenges in the project were involved when integrating multiple data sources, like MongoDB, and third-party APIs."

3. Have you used any version control systems in your projects?

Your answer should be about

The name of the version control system like Git, SVN, Perforce, etc., and your experience with it.

Answer

For example, "We used Git as version control system in our last project. In the previous projects that I have worked, we used SVN as our version control system."

4. Have you worked with any frameworks or libraries? Tell us your experience with them?

Your answer should be about

This is about the external libraries that you used in your project. Name each of the libraries you used, and a brief explanation of how you used them in your project.

Answer

For example, "In my recent project, we used Flask to handle the web requests. Before that, I have used OpenCV when we had to process images to extract information from them."

5. Have you used any testing frameworks?

Your answer should be about

Any Python libraries that you used for testing purposes.

Answer

For example, "We used pytest library for testing. As a developer, I had to write the test cases for APIs that I had developed, and also for the internal functions that handled business logic."

6. Have you worked on projects that involved database integration?

Your answer should be about

Any of the databases that you have used in your Python projects, and how you integrated the project and database.

Answer

For example, "We used MongoDB. We chose it for its flexibility and scalability in handling large volumes of data. For connectivity, we used PyMongo library."

7. Have you ever had to optimize or improve the performance of an application? If so, how did you do it?

Your answer should be about

Answer

For example, "We used Git as version control system for our project."

8. Have you integrated any third-party APIs or services into your Python projects?

Your answer should be about

Answer

For example, "We used Git as version control system for our project."

9. What is the most complex or interesting problem you have solved using Python?

Your answer should be about

Answer

For example, "We used Git as version control system for our project."

Python Basic Interview Questions

1. What is Python

Answer

Python is a programming language. Python contains programming concepts like datatypes, conditional statements, looping statements, collections, object oriented concepts, and many more., and is used to solve real time problems.

2. Why did you choose to learn Python

Answer

First of all Python is loved by a huge base of developer community. It is very easy to learn. I mean, the learning curve with python syntax is pretty simple. It contains many cool packages that can do image processing, data analysis, artificial intelligence, etc. Also, the time taken for a prototype application development is relatively less.

3. List some of the features of Python

Answer

There are many features, but most important ones are:

Python can be used as a scripting language and as well can be converted to byte code.
Python has automatic garbage collection.
Python supports functional, structural, and object oriented programming.
Python can be easily integrated into other programming languages like Java, C++, etc.

4. Is Python language case sensitive or not?

Answer

Yes. Python language is case sensitive.

5. What are the different numeric datatypes in Python?

Answer

There are three datatypes that support numeric values.

Integers (int, long)
Floating point numbers (float)
Complex Numbers (complex)

6. How do you define arrays in Python?

Answer

There is no concept of arrays in Python. But a Python list can be the closest to the concept of arrays.

To define a Python List, we use square brackets with comma separated elements. Following is a Python List with four elements.

alist = [21, 54, 87, 87]

7. What is pickling in Python?

Answer

Pickling is kind of serializing a Python object, so that we can store it in persistent storage or transfer it to other Python applications. pickle module is used for this purpose. And of course, we can de-serialize the pickled python object and construct the copy of original Python object. This process is called unpickling.

8. Which IDE do you use for Python?

Answer

There are many editors out there for Python programming. You can specify your favorite IDE (Integrated Development Environment). Some of them are:

PyCharm
Jupyter
Spyder
PyDev

9. What is the extension for a Python File?

Answer

.py is the extension used to let operating systems know that it is a Python file.

Python Coding Interview Questions

1. Write a program to print first 10 natural numbers

Answer

We can use for loop to print first 10 natural numbers.

for i in range (1,11):
    print(i)

2. Write a program to find largest number of a list

Answer

Considering that the list contains only numbers, following program prints the largest number of a list. We used max() function to find the largest number.

alist = [12, 57, 41, 68, 47, 62]
maximum = max(alist)
print('Maximum in the list :', maximum)

3. What is the output of the following print statement

print("Hello", "World")

Answer

The output would be Hello World. There would be a space between Hello and World, since the default separator for print function is single white space.

Reference: Python print()

4. Which of the following is correct syntax to print the string "Hello World" to console?

console.log("Hello World")
printf("Hello World")
print("Hello World")
System.out.println("Hello World")

Answer

Python has print() built-in function which by default prints the given argument to console output.

5. How do you write a comment in Python?

Answer

A comment in Python starts with the hash character #. Following is an example for a comment in Python.

#This is a comment

6. Which of the following is an assignment operator?

Answer

7. What is the function to define an integer in Python?

Answer

int() function can be used to define an integer. Following are some of the examples to create an integer using int() function.

x = int(12.3)
x = int("12")
x = int(15)

8. Which of the following is correct syntax to start If statement?

if a==b {
if a==b :
if a==b then
if (a==b)

Answer

There has to a semi-colon after the boolean expression.

Reference: Python If