I am working with a dictionary in Python and trying to use the .items() function to get the key-value pairs. I saved the result in a variable l, but when I try to access the first element using l[0], ... ... I use the Claude Code extension in Cursor IDE on Windows 25H2 Pro. More on stackoverflow.com

I ask about list vs tuple, why only immutable types are allowed as dict keys, what is GIL (if candidate seems advanced), i have a task to write a dict comprehension (surprised how many people know list comprehensions perfectly, but struggle with dict variety), a task to sort a list of strings by the string length - checking if they know there is the optional key param in sorted, but i give points if someone proposes a workaround. Mostly folks either know the expeced answer, or give up. Very few in between. I also have a more elaborate, interactive task to check their ability to write classes and work with @property/@....setter. By elaborate I mean we start simple and at each stage I add a complication, like "let's pretend addition is a very computationally expensive operation. How can we refactor this code to avoid unnecessary addition?". I might ask them what sorting algorithm is built into python, or how does python allocate memory when growing lists. More on reddit.com