Fair point. I don’t like resumes in which people state that they know X or Y. I prefer the ones focused on what problems were resolved using what technologies.
I have used Python to solve average business problems, yet I cannot produce non trivial code without looking at the documentation. Same for the other dozen programming languages I have used in the past.
I know enough python to read Calibre's code and understand it, but I keep forgetting syntax details and the actual name of methods and properties, because I'm influenced by whatever language I've been writing in lately. I know what to do, but it will be pseudo-python-code.
That can usually be solved by a quick read of the reference documentation (2-5 mn?).
That's fair. After you know more than a few languages, it's easy to know what you want to express in it and the limitations it has, while the particular name they happened to give those concepts is pretty arbitrary and quickly peeked at if you haven't used it in a while.
For my part, I've written enough python that I doubt the literal syntax will ever be far from my fingers.
I have used Python to solve average business problems, yet I cannot produce non trivial code without looking at the documentation. Same for the other dozen programming languages I have used in the past.