How to reverse order of keys in python dict?

Note: this answer is only true for Python < 3.7. Dicts are insertion ordered starting in 3.7 (and CPython 3.6 as an implementation detail).

The order keys are iterated in is arbitrary. It was only a coincidence that they were in sorted order.

>>> a = {0:'000000',1:'11111',3:'333333',4:'444444'}
>>> a.keys()
[0, 1, 3, 4]
>>> sorted(a.keys())
[0, 1, 3, 4]
>>> reversed(sorted(a.keys()))
<listreverseiterator object at 0x02B0DB70>
>>> list(reversed(sorted(a.keys())))
[4, 3, 1, 0]