You do miss out on the 'sit down and create a project' aspect though. Which shows things like familiarity with project structure, (python specific) virtual environments and paths etc.
These are good skills to have when a dev is debugging as they could get tied up for a long time dealing with something as simple as a relative path issue.
The things you mention can easily be standardized in the company, and starting a new project or setting up a dev environment should be automated to the point that you don’t even have to think about it.
>should be automated to the point that you don’t even have to think about it.
heh I like it. I'm going to put you as an intermediate skill level dev.
So these things break and need to be fixed. They also have to be setup by someone. You also need to know when something breaks, can I rule out that it's not a setup issue, a git merge that's broken a path, a user that's pushed a local dev config file accidentally.
In order to be effective, you need to have a feel and justification for the way things are. Getting someone to setup a project correctly should be a quick and easy way to do this.
For example, I've had candidates submit tech tests with code in the top level directory instead of having it in a src or some other sub folder. Which is obviously a red flag.
These are good skills to have when a dev is debugging as they could get tied up for a long time dealing with something as simple as a relative path issue.