Test & Code - Python Testing & Development

A recent Twitter thread by Simon Willison reminded me that I've been meaning to do an episode on the testing trophy. This discussion is about the distinction between unit and integration tests, what those terms mean, and where we should spend our testing time.Full TranscriptLinks: Simon Willison's Twitter Thread The Testing Trophy and Testing Classifications — Kent C Dodds Write tests. Not too many. Mostly integration. — Kent C Dodds On the Diverse And Fantastical Shapes of Testing — Martin Fowler If you like Test & Code, I think you'll also like Python People Python People is a new podcast about getting to know the people who make Python and our community awesome. Be sure to check out pythonpeople.fm. 

The idea of having a software as a service product sound great, doesn't it? Solve a problem with software. Have a nice looking landing page and website. Get paying customers. Eventually have it make enough revenue so you can turn it into your primary source of income. There's a lot of software talent out there. We could solve lots of problems.  But going from idea to product to first customer is non-trivial.  Especially as a side hustle.  This episode discusses some of the hurdles from idea to first customer. Brandon Braner is building Released.sh. It's a cool idea, but it's not done yet. Brandon and I talk about building side projects: finding a target audience limiting scope to something doable by one person building a great looking landing page finding time to work on things prioritizing and planning learning while building even utilizing third party services to allow you to launch faster and last, but not least, having fun Full TranscriptSpecial Guest: Brandon Braner.Links: Released Tailwind CSS  Tailwind

Who should do QA? How does that change with different projects and teams? What does "doing QA" mean, anyway? Answering these questions are the goals of this episode.Full TranscriptLinks:Test Automation - Who Should be Involved? | Thoughtworks If you like Test & Code, I think you'll also like Python People Python People is a new podcast about getting to know the people who make Python and our community awesome. Be sure to check out pythonpeople.fm. 

In this episode, I talk with Paul Ganssle about a fun workflow that he calls pseudo-TDD. Pseudo-TDD is a way to keep your commit history clean and your tests passing with each commit. This workflow includes using pytest xfail and some semi-advanced version control features.Some strict forms of TDD include something like this: write a failing test that demonstrates a lacking feature or defect write the source code to get the test to pass refactor if necessary repeat In reality, at least for me, the software development process is way more messy than this, and not so smooth and linear.Pauls workflow allow you to develop non-linearly, but commit cleanly.Full TranscriptSpecial Guest: Paul Ganssle.Links: A pseudo-TDD workflow using expected failures episode 171: How and why I use pytest's xfail - Paul Ganssle episode 165: pytest xfail policy and workflow episode 162: Flavors of TDD If you like Test & Code, I think you'll also like Python People Python People is a new podcast about getting to know the people w

In the preface of "Python Testing with pytest" I list some reasons to use pytest, under a section called "why pytest?". Someone asked me recently, a different but related question "why NOT unittest?".unittest is an xUnit style framework. For me, xUnit style frameworks are fatally flawed for software testing.That's what this episode is about, my opinion of  "Why NOT unittest?", or more broadly,  "What are the fatal flaws of xUnit?" Full TranscriptLinks: Python Testing with pytest, Second Edition unittest docs unittest assert methods xUnit - Wikipedia If you like Test & Code, I think you'll also like Python People Python People is a new podcast about getting to know the people who make Python and our community awesome. Be sure to check out pythonpeople.fm. 

A prototype is a a preliminary model of something, from which other forms are developed or copied. In software, we think of prototypes as early things, or a proof of concept. We don't often think of prototyping during daily software development or maintenance. I think we should. This episode is about growing better designed software with the help of a prototype mindset.Full TranscriptLinks: Selecting a programming language can be a form of premature optimization — Brett Cannon's blog post If you like Test & Code, I think you'll also like Python People Python People is a new podcast about getting to know the people who make Python and our community awesome. Be sure to check out pythonpeople.fm. 

Paul Ganssle, is a software developer at Google, core Python dev, and open source maintainer for many projects, has some thoughts about pytest's xfail. He was an early skeptic of using xfail, and is now an proponent of the feature. In this episode, we talk about some open source workflows that are possible because of xfail. Full TranscriptSpecial Guest: Paul Ganssle.Links: How and why I use pytest's xfail — Paul's blog post mentioned in the episode Craft Minimal Bug Reports — Matthew Rocklin's article episode 111: Subtests in Python with unittest and pytest - Paul Ganssle episode 165: pytest xfail policy and workflow episode 166: unittest expectedFailure and xfail If you like Test & Code, I think you'll also like Python People Python People is a new podcast about getting to know the people who make Python and our community awesome. Be sure to check out pythonpeople.fm. 

Prayson Daniel, a principle data scientist, discusses testing machine learning pipelines with pytest.Prayson is using pytest for some pretty cool stuff, including: unit tests, of course testing pipeline stages counterfactual testing performance testing All with pytest. So cool.Full TranscriptSpecial Guest: Prayson Daniel.Links: Python Bytes 250, with Prayson Daniel — Listen to this for more of an introduction to Prayson If you like Test & Code, I think you'll also like Python People Python People is a new podcast about getting to know the people who make Python and our community awesome. Be sure to check out pythonpeople.fm. 

Performance monitoring and error detection is just as important with services and microservices as with any system, but with added complexity. Omri Sass joins the show to explain telemetry and monitoring of services and of systems with services. Full TranscriptSpecial Guest: Omri Sass. If you like Test & Code, I think you'll also like Python People Python People is a new podcast about getting to know the people who make Python and our community awesome. Be sure to check out pythonpeople.fm. 

To understand complex code, it can be helpful to remove abstractions, even if it results in larger functions. This episode walks through a process I use to refactor code that I need to debug and fix, but don't completely understand.Full Transcript If you like Test & Code, I think you'll also like Python People Python People is a new podcast about getting to know the people who make Python and our community awesome. Be sure to check out pythonpeople.fm. 

Paul has a tutorial on testing and TDD with React and TypeScript.  We discuss workflow and the differences, similarities between testing with React/TypeScript and Python. We also discuss what lessons that we can bring from front end testing to Python testing.Full TranscriptSpecial Guest: Paul Everitt.Links: React, TypeScript, and TDD — Paul Everitt's tutorial React Testing Library If you like Test & Code, I think you'll also like Python People Python People is a new podcast about getting to know the people who make Python and our community awesome. Be sure to check out pythonpeople.fm. 

xfail isn't just for pytest tests. Python's unittest has @unittest.expectedFailure.In this episode, we cover: using @unittest.expectedFailure the results of passing and failing tests with expectedFailure using pytest as a test runner for unittest using pytest markers on unittest tests Docs for expectedFailure:  https://docs.python.org/3/library/unittest.html#skipping-tests-and-expected-failuresSome sample code.  unittest only:import unittest class ExpectedFailureTestCase(unittest.TestCase): @unittest.expectedFailure def test_fail(self): self.assertEqual(1, 0, "broken") @unittest.expectedFailure def test_pass(self): self.assertEqual(1, 1, "not broken") unittest with pytest markers:import unittest import pytest class ExpectedFailureTestCase(unittest.TestCase): @pytest.mark.xfail def test_fail(self): self.assertEqual(1, 0, "broken") @pytest.mark.xfail def test_pass(self): self.assertEqual(1, 1, "not broken") Full Transcript If you like Test &

A discussion of how to use the xfail feature of pytest to help with communication on software projects.The episode covers: What is xfail Why I use it Using reason effectively by including issue tracking numbers Using xfail_strict Adding --runxfail when transitioning from development to feature freeze What to do about test failures How all of this might help with team communication Full Transcript If you like Test & Code, I think you'll also like Python People Python People is a new podcast about getting to know the people who make Python and our community awesome. Be sure to check out pythonpeople.fm. 

An overview of the pytest flags that help with debugging. From Chapter 13, Debugging Test Failures, of Python Testing with pytest, 2nd edition.pytest includes quite a few command-line flags that are useful for debugging. We talk about thes flags in this episode.Flags for selecting which tests to run, in which order, and when to stop: -lf / --last-failed: Runs just the tests that failed last. -ff / --failed-failed: Runs all the tests, starting with the last failed. -x / --exitfirst: Stops the tests session afterEd: after?Author: yep the first failure. --maxfail=num: Stops the tests after num failures. -nf / --new-first: Runs all the tests, ordered by file modification time. --sw / --stepwise: Stops the tests at the first failure. Starts the tests at the last failure next time. --sw-skip / --stepwise-skip: Same as --sw, but skips the first failure. Flags to control pytest output: -v / --verbose Displays all the test names, passing or failing. --tb=[auto/long/short/line/native/no] Controls the traceback style. -

pip : "pip installs packages" or maybe "Package Installer for Python" pip is an invaluable tool when developing with Python. A lot of people know pip as a way to install third party packages from pypi.org You can also use pip to install from other indexes (or is it indices?)You can also use pip to install a package in a local directory. That's the part I want to jump in and explore with Stéphane Bidoul. The way pip installs from a local directory is about to change, and the story is fascinating.Full TranscriptSpecial Guest: Stéphane Bidoul.Links: The Odoo Community Association PEP 610 -- Recording the Direct URL Origin of installed distributions | Python.org PEP 660 -- Editable installs for pyproject.toml based builds (wheel based) | Python.org — Bidoul pip install --no-index --find-links  Solving issues related to out-of-tree builds · Issue #7555 · pypa/pip pip list json format If you like Test & Code, I think you'll also like Python People Python People is a new podcast about getting to know the peopl

What flavor of TDD do you practice? In this episode we talk about: Classical vs Mockist TDD Detroit vs London (I actually refer to it in the episode as Chicago instead of Detroit. Oh well.) Static vs Behavior Inside Out vs Outside In Double Loop TDD BDD FDD Tracer Bullets Rules of TDD Team Structure Lean TDD This is definitely an episode I'd like feedback on. Reach out to me @brianokken or via the contact form for further questions or if I missed some crucial variant of TDD that you know and love. Full TranscriptSponsored By: PyCharm Professional: Try PyCharm Pro for 4 months and learn how PyCharm will save you time. Promo Code: TESTANDCODE22Links: Mocks Aren't Stubs - Martin Fowler Mockists Are Dead. Long Live Classicists. Double Loop TDD BDD: Behavior-driven development FDD: Feature-driven development My reaction to “Is TDD Dead?” - pythontest.com Test First Programming / Test First Development Humorous list of TDD variants — BDD = Buzzword Driven Development, CDD = Calendar Driven Development, et

Software development processes create value, and have waste, in the Lean sense of the word waste. Lean manufacturing and lean software development changed the way we look at value and waste. This episode looks at lean definitions of waste, so we can see it clearly when we encounter it. I'm going to use the term waste and value in future episodes. I'm using waste in a Lean sense, so we can look at software processes critically, see the value chain, and try to reduce waste. Lean manufacturing and lean software development caused people to talk about and examine waste and value, even in fields where we didn't really think about waste that much to begin with. Software is just ones and zeros. Is there waste? When I delete a file, nothing goes into the landfill. The mistake I'm making here is confusing the common English definition of waste when what we're talking about is the Lean definition of waste. This episode tries to clear up the confusion. Full TranscriptLinks: Big Design Up Front Lightweight Methodo

Should your code be DRY or DAMP or something completely different? How about your test code? Do different rules apply? Wait, what do all of these acronyms mean? We'll get to all of these definitions, and then talk about how it applies to both production code and test code in this episode. Full TranscriptSponsored By: Datadog: Modern end-to-end monitoring & security. See inside any stack, any app, at any scale, anywhere. Get started with a free trial at testandcode.com/datadog and Datadog will send you a free t-shirt. Links: The Pragmatic Programmer, 20th Anniversary Edition Don't repeat yourself - Wikipedia a-ha - Take On Me Rule of three - Wikipedia What does “DAMP not DRY” mean when talking about unit tests? - Stack Overflow If you like Test & Code, I think you'll also like Python People Python People is a new podcast about getting to know the people who make Python and our community awesome. Be sure to check out pythonpeople.fm. 

When learning data science and machine learning techniques, you need to work on a data set. Matt Harrison had a great idea: Why not use your own Twitter analytics data? So, he did that with his own data, and shares what he learned in this episode, including some of his secrets to gaining followers. In this episode we talk about: Looking at your own Twitter analytics data. Using Python, pandas, Jupyter for data cleaning and exploratory analysis Data visualization Machine learning, principal component analysis, clustering Model drift and re-running analysis What kind of tweets perform well And much more Full TranscriptSpecial Guest: Matt Harrison.Sponsored By: PyCharm Professional: Try PyCharm Pro for 4 months and learn how PyCharm will save you time. Promo Code: TESTANDCODE22Links: Applied Pandas: Twitter Analytics — the course matt harrison (@__mharrison__) / Twitter — follow for Python, Data Science, & Career Advice Brian Okken (@brianokken) / Twitter — follow for Python, pytest, Packaging, &

Iterative processes that include writing test code and production code together, such as TDD, help make coding fun. All of us that care about developing quality code with the help of testing can learn from each other, regardless of programming language. Today we step outside our normal Python comfort zone and talk with Gio about TDD in Swift. Gio Lodi, author of TDD in Swift, joins the show to discuss Test Driven Development, software workflows, bottom up vs top down, rapid feedback, developer vs customer facing tests, and more. Full TranscriptSpecial Guest: Gio Lodi.Sponsored By: Datadog: Modern end-to-end monitoring & security. See inside any stack, any app, at any scale, anywhere. Get started with a free trial at testandcode.com/datadog and Datadog will send you a free t-shirt. Links: TDD in Swift with SwiftUI and Combine mokacoding - Gio's blog XCTest Software Design: Tidy First? - Kent Beck on Substack If you like Test & Code, I think you'll also like Python People Python People is a new