Python Automation and Monitoring Questions

Focuses on using the Python programming language to automate operational tasks and implement monitoring workflows. Includes writing robust scripts and small applications for file input and output, subprocess management, making HTTP requests and handling responses, parsing and producing JSON, structured error handling and retries, logging and alerting, and clear code organization and packaging. Discuss when to choose Python over shell scripts for complexity, portability, error handling, and maintainability. Covers libraries and tooling for scheduling and background jobs, interacting with cloud provider software development kits, instrumenting applications for metrics and traces, integrating with monitoring stacks, and basic concurrency and asynchronous programming patterns when needed. Also includes testing and validation of automation scripts, secure handling of credentials and configuration, and deployment practices for operational scripts.