Test & Code

Latest Episodes:

100: A/B Testing - Leemay Nassery Feb 13, 2020

Show notes

Let's say you have a web application and you want to make some changes to improve it.
You may want to A/B test it first to make sure you are really improving things.

But really what is A/B testing?

That's what we'll find out on this episode with Leemay Nassery.

Special Guest: Leemay Nassery.

99: Software Maintenance and Chess Jan 30, 2020

Show notes

I play a form of group chess that has some interesting analogies to software development and maintenance of existing systems. This episode explains group chess and explores a few of those analogies.

98: pytest-testmon - selects tests affected by changed files and methods - Tibor Arpas Jan 21, 2020

Show notes

pytest-testmon is a pytest plugin which selects and executes only tests you need to run. It does this by collecting dependencies between tests and all executed code (internally using Coverage.py) and comparing the dependencies against changes. testmon updates its database on each test execution, so it works independently of version control.

In this episode, I talk with testmon creator Tibor Arpas about testmon, about it's use and how it works.

Special Guest: Tibor Arpas.

Links:

97: 2019 Retrospective, 2020 Plans, and an amazing decade Dec 31, 2019

Show notes

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 2019

10: episode 46, Testing Hard To Test Applications - Anthony Shaw
9: episode 64, Practicing Programming to increase your value
8: episode 70, Learning Software without a CS degree - Dane Hillard
7: episode 75, Modern Testing Principles - Alan Page
6: episode 72, Technical Interview Fixes - April Wensel
5: episode 69, Andy Hunt - The Pragmatic Programmer
4: episode 73, PyCon 2019 Live Recording
3: episode 71, Memorable Tech Talks, The Ultimate Guide - Nina Zakharenko
2: episode 76, TDD: Don’t be afraid of Test-Driven Development - Chris May
1: episode 89, Improving Programming Education - Nicholas Tollervey

Looking 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 code
play with the code
try new things
have fun without fear
go home feeling good about what I did
be 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 things

Links:

Thanks, 201X! — Mahmoud Hashemi's blog

96: Azure Pipelines - Thomas Eckert Dec 16, 2019

Show notes

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:

95: Data Science Pipeline Testing with Great Expectations - Abe Gong Nov 30, 2019

Show notes

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

94: The real 11 reasons I don't hire you - Charity Majors Nov 18, 2019

Show notes

You've applied for a job, maybe lots of jobs.
Depending on the company, you've gotta get through:

a resume review
a coding challange
a phone screen
maybe another code example
an in person interview

If 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

93: Software Testing, Book Writing, Teaching, Public Speaking, and PyCarolinas - Andy Knight Oct 30, 2019

Show notes

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 testing
Being an adjunct professor
Public speaking and preparing talk proposals
- including tips from Andy about proposals and preparing for talks
PyCarolinas

Special Guest: Andy Knight.

Links:

92: 9 Steps to Crater Quality & Destroy Customer Satisfaction - Cristian Medina Oct 20, 2019

Show notes

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 quality
Require all tests to be automated before releasing
Require 100% code coverage
Isolate the Test organization from Development
Measure the success of the process, not the product.
- Metrics, if rewarded, will always be gamed.
Require granular projections from engineers
Reward quick patching instead of solving
Plan for today instead of tomorrow

Special 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

91: Python 3.8 - there's a lot more new than most people are talking about Oct 16, 2019

Show notes

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:

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