Test and Code — Overcast

53: Seven Databases in Seven Weeks - Luc Perkins

Nov 19 • 54 min

Luc Perkins joins the show to talk about "Seven Databases in Seven Weeks: A guide to modern databases and the NoSQL movement." We discuss a bit about each database: Redis, Neo4J, CouchDB, MongoDB, HBase, Postgres, and DynamoDB.Special Guest: Luc…

52: pyproject.toml : the future of Python packaging - Brett Cannon

Nov 5 • 50 min

Brett Cannon discusses the changes afoot in Python packaging as a result of PEP 517, PEP 518, starting with "How did we get here?" and "Where are we going?" Discussed: flit Poetry tox Continuous Integration setup.py, MANIFEST.in, etc. pipenv what's with…

51: Feature Testing

Oct 30 • 31 min

Andy Knight joins me in discussing the concept of feature testing. A feature tests is "a test verifying a service or library as the customer would use it, but within a single process." That was a quote from an article that appeared on the Twitter…

50: Flaky Tests and How to Deal with Them

Oct 25 • 32 min

Anthony Shaw joins Brian to discuss flaky tests and flaky test suites. What are flaky tests? Is it the same as fragile tests? Why are they bad? How do we deal with them? What causes flakiness? How can we fix them? How can we avoid them? Proactively…

49: tox - Oliver Bestwalter

Oct 15 • 55 min

tox is a simple yet powerful tool that is used by many Python projects. tox is not just a tool to help you test a Python project against multiple versions of Python. In this interview, Oliver and Brian just scratch the surface of this simple yet powerful…

48: A GUI for pytest

Oct 8 • 12 min

The story of how I came to find a good user interface for running and debugging automated tests is interleaved with a multi-year effort of mine to have a test workflow that’s works smoothly with product development and actually speeds things up. It’s also…

47: Automation Panda - Andy Knight

Sep 28 • 39 min

Interview with Andy Knight, the Automation Panda. Selenium & WebDriver Headless Chrome Gherkin BDD Given When Then pytest-bdd PyCharm Writing Good Gherkin Overhead of Gherkin and if it's worth it When to use pytest vs pytest-bdd The art of test automation…

46: Testing Hard To Test Applications - Anthony Shaw

Sep 2 • 42 min

How do you write tests for things that aren’t that easy to write tests for? That question is a possibly terrible summary of a question sent to me by a listener. And to help me start answering that question, I asked a friend of mine to help, Antony Shaw.…

45: David Heinemeier Hansson - Software Development and Testing, TDD, and exploratory QA

Aug 13 • 40 min

David Heinemeier Hansson is the creator of Ruby on Rails, founder & CTO at Basecamp (formerly 37signals). He's a best selling author, public speaker, and even a Le Mans class winning racing driver. All of that, of course, is awesome. But that's not why I…

44: Mentoring - Nina Zakharenko

Jul 21 • 26 min

Nina Zakharenko is a cloud developer advocate at Microsoft focusing on Python. She's also an excellent public speaker. We talk about her experience with mentoring, both being a mentor, and utilizing mentors. We also talk about public speaking, her move to…

Preparing for Technical Talks with Kelsey Hightower - bonus episode

Jul 17 • 8 min

After I had wrapped up the interview with Kelsey Hightower for episode 43, I asked him one last question. You see, I admire the his presentation style. So I asked him if he would share with me how he prepared for his presentations. His answer is so…

43: Kelsey Hightower - End to End & Integration Testing

Jul 5 • 41 min

I first heard Kelsey speak during his 2017 PyCon keynote. He's an amazing speaker, and I knew right then I wanted to hear more about what he does and hear more of his story. We discuss testing, of course, but we take it further and discuss: tests for…

42: Using Automated Tests to Help Teach Python - Trey Hunner

Jun 28 • 58 min

This interview with Trey Hunner discusses his use of automated tests to help teach programming. Automated testing is a huge part of developing great software. But many new developers don't get exposed to testing for quite a while. But this is changing.…

41: Testing in DevOps and Agile - Anthony Shaw

Apr 18 • 44 min

We talk with Anthony Shaw about some of the testing problems facing both DevOps teams, and Agile teams. We also talk about his recent pull request accepted into pytest.Special Guest: Anthony Shaw.Sponsored By:Python Testing with pytest: Simple, Rapid,…

40: On Podcasting - Adam Clark

Apr 10 • 48 min

Adam is the host of The Gently Mad podcast, and teaches the steps in creating and growing a podcast in his course Irresistible Podcasting. He was one of the people who inspired Brian to get the Test & Code podcast started in the first place. Brian took…

39: Thorough software testing for critical features

Mar 29 • 18 min

Complete and exhaustive testing is not possible. Nor would it be fun, or maintainable, or a good use of your time. However, some functionality is important enough to make sure the test behavior coverage is thorough enough to have high confidence in it's…

38: Prioritize software tests with RCRCRC

Mar 13 • 11 min

RCRCRC was developed by Karen Nicole Johnson. In this episode we discuss the mnemonic/heuristic and use it to prioritize tests for the cards application. Recent: new features, new areas of code Core: essential functions must continue to work, your…

37: What tests to write first

Mar 8 • 20 min

This episode starts down the path of test strategy with the first tests to write in either a legacy system or a project just getting off it's feet. We cover: My approach to testing existing systems. Put names to strategies so we can refer to them later.…

36: Stephanie Hurlburt - Mentoring and Open Office Hours

Feb 13 • 31 min

Stephanie is a co-founder and graphics engineer at Binomial. She works on Basis, an image compressor, and has customers in games, video, mapping, and any application that has lots of image data. Stephanie has also been encouraging experienced engineers to…

35: Continuing Education and Certificate Programs at UW

Feb 1 • 25 min

There are lots of ways to up your skills. Of course, I'm a big fan of learning through reading books, such as upping your testing skills by reading Python Testing with pytest. And then there are online learning systems and MOOCs. At the other end of the…

34: TDD and Test First

Dec 31, 2017 • 25 min

An in depth discussion of Test Driven Development (TDD) should include a discussion of Test First. So that's where we start. Why write tests first? How do you know what tests to write? What are the steps for test first? Isn't this just TDD? Functional…

33: Katharine Jarmul - Testing in Data Science

Nov 30, 2017 • 37 min

A discussion with Katharine Jarmul, aka kjam, about some of the challenges of data science with respect to testing. Some of the topics we discuss: experimentation vs testing testing pipelines and pipeline changes automating data validation property based…

32: David Hussman - Agile vs Agility, Dude’s Law, and more

Oct 3, 2017 • 47 min

A wonderful discussion with David Hussman. David and Brian look back at what all we've learned in XP, TDD, and other Agile methodologies, where things have gone awry, how to bring the value back, and where testing fits into all of this. How to build the…

31: I’m so sick of the testing pyramid

Sep 27, 2017 • 39 min

What started as a twitter disagreement carries over into this civil discussion of software testing. Brian and Paul discuss testing practices such as the testing pyramid, TDD, unit testing, system testing, and balancing test effort. the Testing Pyramid the…

30: Legacy Code - M. Scott Ford

Aug 1, 2017 • 41 min

M. Scott Ford is the founder and chief code whisperer at Corgibytes, a company focused on helping other companies with legacy code. Topics include: How M. Scott Ford got into forming a company that works on legacy code. Technical debt Process debt…

29: Kobiton & QASymphony - Josh Lieberman

Jun 30, 2017 • 18 min

Kobiton is a service to test mobile apps on real devices. QASymphony offers software testing and QA tools.Special Guest: Josh Lieberman.Sponsored By:Patreon Supporters: Help support the show with as little as $1 per month. Funds help pay for expenses…

28: Chaos Engineering & Experimentation at Netflix - Casey Rosenthal

Apr 7, 2017 • 32 min

Today we have an interview with Casey Rosenthal of Netflix. One of the people making sure Netflix runs smoothly is Casey Rosenthall. He is the manager for the Traffic, Intuition, and Chaos teams at Netflix. He's got a great perspective on quality and…

27: Mahmoud Hashemi : unit, integration, and system testing

Feb 26, 2017 • 41 min

What is the difference between a unit test, an integration test, and a system test? Mahmoud Hashemi helps me to define these terms, as well as discuss the role of all testing variants in software development. What is the difference between a unit test, an…

26: pyresttest – Sam Van Oort

Dec 1, 2016 • 57 min

Interview with Sam Van Oort about pyresttest, "A REST testing and API microbenchmarking tool" pyresttest A question in the Test & Code Slack channel was raised about testing REST APIs. There were answers such as pytest + requests, of course, but there was…

25: Selenium, pytest, Mozilla – Dave Hunt

Dec 1, 2016 • 42 min

Interview with Dave Hunt @davehunt82. We Cover: Selenium Driver pytest pytest plugins: pytest-selenium pytest-html pytest-variables tox Dave Hunt’s “help wanted” list on github Mozilla Also: fixtures xfail CI and xfail and html reports CI and capturing…

24: pytest with Raphael Pierzina

Nov 10, 2016 • 35 min

pytest is an extremely popular test framework used by many projects and companies. In this episode, I interview Raphael Pierzina (@hackebrot), a core contributor to both pytest and cookiecutter. We discuss how Raphael got involved with both projects, his…

23: Lessons about testing and TDD from Kent Beck

Sep 30, 2016 • 13 min

Kent Beck's twitter profile says "Programmer, author, father, husband, goat farmer". But I know him best from his work on extreme programming, test first programming, and test driven development. He's the one. The reason you know about TDD is because of…

22: Converting Manual Tests to Automated Tests

Sep 24, 2016 • 10 min

How do you convert manual tests to automated tests? This episode looks at the differences between manual and automated tests and presents two strategies for converting manual to automated.Sponsored By:Patreon Supporters: Help support the show with as…

21: Terminology: test fixtures, subcutaneous testing, end to end testing, system testing

Aug 31, 2016 • 18 min

A listener requested that I start covering some terminology. I think it's a great idea. Covered in this episode: Test Fixtures Subcutaneous Testing End to End Testing (System Testing) I also discuss: A book rewrite Progress on transcripts A story from the…

20: Talk Python To Me host Michael Kennedy

Jul 29, 2016 • 47 min

I talk with Michael about: Episodes of his show having to do with testing. His transition from employee to podcast host and online training entrepreneur. His Python training courses. The Pyramid Web framework. Courses by Michael Explore Python Jumpstart…

19: Python unittest with Robert Collins

Jun 15, 2016 • 40 min

Interview with Robert Collins, current core maintainer of Python's unittest module. Some of the topics covered How did Robert become the maintainer of unittest? unittest2 as a rolling backport of unittest test and class parametrization with subtest and…

18: Testing in Startups and Hiring Software Engineers with Joe Stump

Apr 20, 2016 • 53 min

In this episode, I interview with Joe Stump, cofounder of Sprintly (https://sprint.ly), to give the startup perspective to development and testing. Joe has spent his career in startups. He's also been involved with hiring and talent acquisition for…

17: The Travis Foundation

Apr 11, 2016 • 26 min

The Travis Foundation. Interview with Laura Gaetano Links and things we talked about: Travis Foundation Open Source Grants The Foundation's support of Katrina Owen from exercism.io Exercism.io Rails Girls summer of code Diversity Tickets Conference…

16: Welcome to Test and Code

Mar 31, 2016 • 8 min

This is a small episode. I'm changing the name from the "Python Test Podcast" to "Test & Code". I just want to discuss the reasons behind this change, and take a peek at what's coming up in the future for this podcast. Links The Waterfall Model and…

15: Lean Software Development

Mar 9, 2016 • 10 min

An introduction to Lean Software Development This is a quick intro to the concepts of Lean Software Development. I'm starting a journey of trying to figure out how to apply lean principles to software development in the context of 2016/2017. Links Lean…

14: Continuous Integration with Travis CI – Josh Kalderimis

Feb 25, 2016 • 58 min

Interview with Josh Kalderimis from Travis CI. Josh is a co-founder and Chief Post-It Officer at Travis CI. Topics What is Continuous Integration, CI What is Travis CI Some history of the company travis-ci.org vs travis-ci.com and merging the two…

13: Ian Cordasco – Betamax

Feb 17, 2016 • 20 min

Testing apps that use requests without using mock. Interview with Ian Cordasco (@sigmavirus24) Topics: Betamax - python library for replaying requests interactions for use in testing. requests github3.py Pycon 2015 talk: Ian Cordasco - Cutting Off the…

12: Coverage.py with Ned Batchelder

Feb 10, 2016 • 40 min

In this episode I interview Ned Batchelder. I know that coverage.py is very important to a lot of people to understand how much of their code is being covered by their test suites. Since I'm far from an expert on coverage, I asked Ned to discuss it on the…

11: pytest assert magic

Feb 4, 2016 • 13 min

How pytest, unittest, and nose deal with assertions. The job of the test framework to tell developers how and why their tests failed is a difficult job. In this episode I talk about assert helper functions and the 3 methods pytest uses to get around…

10: Test Case Design using Given-When-Then from BDD

Jan 31, 2016 • 20 min

Given-When-Then is borrowed from BDD and is my favorite structure for test case design. It doesn’t matter if you are using pytest, unittest, nose, or something completely different, this episode will help you write better tests. The Given-When-Then…

9: Harry Percival : Testing Web Apps with Python, Selenium, Django

Jan 19, 2016 • 45 min

Intro to Harry Percival, his background and story of how he got into TDD and ended up writing a book Comparing using unittest and pytest with applicability to testing django projects. Functional end to end testing with selenium. The django test client for…

8: Agile vs Agility : Agile Is Dead (Long Live Agility)

Dec 15, 2015 • 8 min

In today's podcast, I dodge the question of "What do you think of Agile?" by reading an essay from Dave ThomasSupport Test and Code

7: The Waterfall Model and “Managing the Development of Large Software Systems”

Oct 21, 2015 • 29 min

The waterfall model has been used and modified and changed and rebelled against since before I started programming. Waterfall such an important character in the story of software development that we should get to know it a better.Support Test and Code

6: Writing software is like nothing else

Oct 20, 2015 • 6 min

My experience with writing software comes from my experience: where I grew up, what eras I lived through, what my economical and geographical experiences have been, when I learned to code, and what projects I've worked on.Sponsored By:Patreon Supporters:…

5: Test Classes: No OO experience required

Sep 23, 2015 • 7 min

Setup and Teardown Benefits of Test Fixtures code reuse cleanup of resources errors vs failures focusing your thinking on what you are testing and what you are not scoping for efficiency Brief look at pytest named fixtures References pytest fixtures…

4: Test Fixtures: Setup, Teardown, and so much more

Sep 11, 2015 • 13 min

Setup and Teardown Benefits of Test Fixtures code reuse cleanup of resources errors vs failures focusing your thinking on what you are testing and what you are not scoping for efficiency Brief look at pytest named fixtures References pytest fixtures…

3: Why test?

Sep 2, 2015 • 26 min

Answering a listener question. Why testing? What are the benefits? Why automated testing over manual testing? Why test first? Why do automated testing during development? Why test to the user level API? After describing my ideal test strategy and project,…

2: Pytest vs Unittest vs Nose

Aug 20, 2015 • 12 min

I list my requirements for a framework and discuss how Pytest, Unittest, and Nose measure up to those requirements. Mentioned: pytest unittest nose delayed assert pytest-expect doctest I did the audio processing differently for this episode. Please let me…

1: What to expect from the Python Test Podcast

Aug 11, 2015 • 14 min

Upcoming topic categories: Mechanics of testing testing concepts and strategies Software development methodologies Software development skills and best practices Software testing in education and programming instruction Using Python test frameworks for…