Test & Code

Latest Episodes:

41: Testing in DevOps and Agile - Anthony Shaw Apr 18, 2018

Show notes

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.

Links:

40: On Podcasting - Adam Clark Apr 10, 2018

Show notes

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 his course in 2015. Adam is in the process of updating the course, and building a community around it.

Warning: This may be an episode to listen to with headphones if you have kids around. There is swearing.

I wanted to get Adam's help to convince many of you to either come on this show as a guest, or start your own podcast. We did some of that. But we also cover a lot of issues like self doubt and the importance of community.

Special Guest: Adam Clark.

Links:

39: Thorough software testing for critical features Mar 29, 2018

Show notes

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 quality.

In this episode, we discuss 3 techniques that can be combined to quickly generate test cases. We then talk about how to implement them efficiently in pytest.

The techniques covered are:

equivalence partitioning
boundary value analysis
decision tables

We discuss how to use these to generate test cases for a new list filter functionality in the cards application.

The resulting tests:

1 UI test to make sure the options are able to be passed in correctly.
1 small parametrized test function with 16 single line parameter sets representing the different test cases.

Links:

38: Prioritize software tests with RCRCRC Mar 13, 2018

Show notes

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 products USPs (Unique Selling Propositions)
Risk: some areas of an application pose more risk, perhaps areas important to customers but not used regularly by the development team.
Configuration sensitive: code that’s dependent on environment settings or operating system specifics
Repaired: tests to reproduce bugs, tests for functionality that has been recently repaired.
Chronic: functionality that frequently breaks

Links:

37: What tests to write first Mar 08, 2018

Show notes

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.
Explain the strategies in general terms and explain why they are useful.
Discuss how these strategies are used in an example project. (The code is available on github).

Strategies covered today:

Dog Fooding
Exploratory Testing
Tracer Bullet Tests
Act Like A Customer (ALAC) Tests
Manual Procedures
Initial automated tests at 2 levels, API and UI.

36: Stephanie Hurlburt - Mentoring and Open Office Hours Feb 13, 2018

Show notes

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 open up their twitter DMs to questions from anyone, to help mentor people not only in technical questions, but in career questions as well.

She also sets aside some time to mentor people through skype when written form just doesn't cut it.

That's the primary reason I have Stephanie on today, to talk about mentoring and open office hours.

But we also talk about

Binomial
image compression
texture mapping
the use of both manual and automated testing for complex systems
sane work hours
work life balance
and how long hours have led her to the opinions she holds today

Special Guest: Stephanie Hurlburt.

Links:

Binomial
List of Engineers Willing to Mentor You — Stephanie Hurlburt
Stephanie Hurlburt (@sehurlburt) | Twitter
Slack - Python Testing / Test & Code — A super nice group of folks who are great at answering test related questions.

35: Continuing Education and Certificate Programs at UW Feb 01, 2018

Show notes

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 spectrum is a full blown university degree.

One option kind of in the middle is continuing education programs available through some universities, such as University of Washington.

To discuss this option with me in more depth, we've got Andrew Hoover,
Senior Director, Program Strategy, University of Washington Continuum College

Special Guest: Andrew Hoover.

Links:

34: TDD and Test First Dec 31, 2017

Show notes

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 Tests vs Unit Tests

Links:

33: Katharine Jarmul - Testing in Data Science Nov 30, 2017

Show notes

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 testing
schema validation and detecting schema changes
using unit test techniques to test data pipeline stages
testing nodes and transitions in DAGs
testing expected and unexpected data
missing data and non-signals
corrupting a dataset with noise
fuzz testing for both data pipelines and web APIs
datafuzz
hypothesis
testing internal interfaces
documenting and sharing domain expertise to build good reasonableness
intermediary data and stages
neural networks
speaking at conferences

Special Guest: Katharine Jarmul.

Links:

@kjam on Twitter — Data Magic and Computer Sorcery
Kjamistan: Data Science
datafuzz’s Python library — The goal of datafuzz is to give you the ability to test your data science code and models with BAD data.
Hypothesis Python library — Hypothesis is a Python library for finding edge cases in your code you wouldn’t have thought to look for.

32: David Hussman - Agile vs Agility, Dude's Law, and more Oct 03, 2017

Show notes

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 wrong thing faster
Agile vs Agility
Product vs Process
Where testing fits into software development practices.
"Integration tests, there's a name that needs to be refactored desperately."
Integration tests are "story tests". They tell the story of the product.
XP and TDD and the relationship with tests
To test for design, use microtests, xUnit style.
User Advocy tests are often lacking, but are needed to learn about the product.
"I just keep writing tests until I'm not scared anymore." - Kent Beck
Dude's Law: Value = Why/How
People often focus so much on the how that they forget about why they are doing something.
Subcutaneous Tests
"The hardest part of programming is thinking."
Refactoring vs Repaving
Agility means being able to quickly change direction
During experimentation and learning, what matters isn't how much you got done, but how much you learn.
"The best way to get automation is to make developers do manual tests."

Special Guest: David Hussman.

Links:

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