Test & Code

This episode is not just a look back on 2019, and a look forward to 2020. Also, 2019 is the end of an amazingly transofrmative decade for me, so I'm going to discuss that as well.top 10 episodes of 201910: episode 46, Testing Hard To Test Applications - Anthony Shaw9: episode 64, Practicing Programming to increase your value8: episode 70, Learning Software without a CS degree - Dane Hillard7: episode 75, Modern Testing Principles - Alan Page6: episode 72, Technical Interview Fixes - April Wensel5: episode 69, Andy Hunt - The Pragmatic Programmer4: episode 73, PyCon 2019 Live Recording3: episode 71, Memorable Tech Talks, The Ultimate Guide - Nina Zakharenko2: episode 76, TDD: Don’t be afraid of Test-Driven Development - Chris May1: episode 89, Improving Programming Education - Nicholas TollerveyLooking back on the last decade Some amazing events, like 2 podcasts, a book, a blog, speaking events, and teaching has led me to where we're at now.Looking forward to 2020 and beyond I discussed what's in store in the next year and moving forward.A closing quote Software is a blast. At least, it should be.  I want everyone to have fun writing software.  Leaning on automated tests is the best way I know to allow me confidence and freedome to:rewrite big chunks of codeplay with the codetry new thingshave fun without feargo home feeling good about what I didbe proud of my code I want everyone to have that.That's why I promote and teach automated testing.I hope you had an amazing decade.  And I wish you a productive and fun 2020 and the upcoming decade. If we work together and help eachother reach new heights, we can achieve some pretty amazing thingsLinks:Thanks, 201X! — Mahmoud Hashemi's blog

Pipelines are used a lot in software projects to automated much of the work around build, test, deployment and more. Thomas Eckert talks with me about pipelines, specifically Azure Pipelines. Some of the history, and how we can use pipelines for modern Python projects.Special Guest: Thomas Eckert.Links:click repoAzure Pipelines Action · Actions · GitHub Marketplace

Data science and machine learning are affecting more of our lives every day. Decisions based on data science and machine learning are heavily dependent on the quality of the data, and the quality of the data pipeline.Some of the software in the pipeline can be tested to some extent with traditional testing tools, like pytest.But what about the data? The data entering the pipeline, and at various stages along the pipeline, should be validated.That's where pipeline tests come in.Pipeline tests are applied to data. Pipeline tests help you guard against upstream data changes and monitor data quality.Abe Gong and Superconductive are building an open source project called Great Expectations. It's a tool to help you build pipeline tests.This is quite an interesting idea, and I hope it gains traction and takes off.Special Guest: Abe Gong.Links:Great Expectations

You've applied for a job, maybe lots of jobs. Depending on the company, you've gotta get through:a resume reviewa coding challangea phone screenmaybe another code examplean in person interviewIf you get the job, and you enjoy the work, awesome, congratulations.If you don't get the job, it'd be really great to know why.Sometimes it isn't because you aren't a skilled engineer.What other reasons are there?Well, that's what we're talking about today.Charity Majors is the cofounder and CTO of Honeycomb.io, and we're going to talk about reasons for not hiring someone.This is a very informative episode both for people who job hunt in the future and for hiring managers and people on the interview team.Special Guest: Charity Majors.Links:The (Real) 11 Reasons I Don’t Hire You — The article

Andy Knight is the Automation Panda. Andy Knight is passionate about software testing, and shares his passion through public speaking, writing on automationpanda.com, teaching as an adjunct professor, and now also through writing a book and organizing a new regional Python conference.Topics of this episode include:Andy's book on software testingBeing an adjunct professorPublic speaking and preparing talk proposals including tips from Andy about proposals and preparing for talksPyCarolinasSpecial Guest: Andy Knight.Links:Automation PandaAndy's Speaking eventsPyCarolinas 2020

Cristian Medina wrote an article recently called "Test Engineering Anti-Patterns: Destroy Your Customer Satisfaction and Crater Your Quality By Using These 9 Easy Organizational Practices"Of course, it's sarcastic, and aims to highlight many problems with organizational practices that reduce software quality.The article doesn't go out of character, and only promotes the anti-patterns. However, in this interview, we discuss each point, and the corollary of what you really should do. At least, our perspectives.Here's the list of all the points discussed in the article and in this episode:Make the Test teams solely responsible for qualityRequire all tests to be automated before releasingRequire 100% code coverageIsolate the Test organization from DevelopmentMeasure the success of the process, not the product. Metrics, if rewarded, will always be gamed.Require granular projections from engineersReward quick patching instead of solvingPlan for today instead of tomorrowSpecial Guest: Cristian Medina.Links:Test Engineering Anti-Patterns: Destroy Your Customer Satisfaction and Crater Your Quality By Using These 9 Easy Organizational Practices — The article we discuss in the show.tryexceptpass — Cris's blog

Python 3.8.0 final is live and ready to download. On todays episode, we're going to run through what's new, picking out the bits that I think are the most interesting and affect the most people, including new language features standard library changes optimizations in 3.8 Not just the big stuff everyone's already talking about. But also some little things that will make programming Python even more fun and easy. I'm excited about Python 3.8. And really, this episode is to my way to try to get you excited about it too. Links:What’s New In Python 3.8 - at docs.python.orgDownload Python 3.8 at Python.org

pytest 5.2 was just released, and with it, a cool fun feature called dynamic scope fixtures. Anthony Sottile so tilly is one of the pytest core developers, so I thought it be fun to have Anthony describe this new feature for us. We also talk about parametrized testing and really what is fixture scope and then what is dynamic scope.Special Guest: Anthony Sottile.Links:pytest changelogpytest fixturesdynamic scope fixturesepisode 82: pytest - favorite features since 3.0 the pytest book — Python Testing with pytest

Nicholas Tollervey is working toward better ways of teaching programming. His projects include the Mu Editor, PyperCard, and CodeGrades. Many of us talk about problems with software education. Nicholas is doing something about it.Special Guest: Nicholas Tollervey.Links:Code With Mu — a simple Python editor for beginner programmersMade With Mu — A blog to celebrate projects that use the Mu Python code editor to create cool stuff.PyperCard — Easy GUIs for AllCodeGrades

Tools like error monitoring, crash reporting, and performance monitoring are tools to help you create a better user experience and are fast becoming crucial tools for web development and site reliability. But really what are they? And when do you need them? You've built a cool web app or service, and you want to make sure your customers have a great experience. You know I advocate for utilizing automated tests so you find bugs before your customers do. However, fast development lifecycles, and quickly reacting to customer needs is a good thing, and we all know that complete testing is not possible. That's why I firmly believe that site monitoring tools like logging, crash reporting, performance monitoring, etc are awesome for maintaining and improving user experience. John-Daniel Trask, JD, the CEO of Raygun, agreed to come on the show and let me ask all my questions about this whole field.Special Guest: John-Daniel Trask.