Test & Code

We talk with Adam Johnson about his new book, "Boost Your Django DX".

Developer experience includes tools and practices to make developers more effective and efficient, and just plain make software development more fun and satisfying.
One of the things I love about this book is that it's not just for Django devs.
I'd guess that about half the book is about topics that all Python developers would find useful, from virtual environments to linters to testing.
But of course, also tons of tips and tools for working with Django.

Links:

• “Boost Your Django DX” Released — Adam's announcement
• Boost Your Django DX — The book

Sponsored by:

• The Complete pytest course is now a bundle, with each part available separately.
  • pytest Primary Power teaches the super powers of pytest that you need to learn to use pytest effectively.
  • Using pytest with Projects has lots of "when you need it" sections like debugging failed tests, mocking, testing strategy, and CI
  • Then pytest Booster Rockets can help with advanced parametrization and building plugins.
• Whether you need to get started with pytest today, or want to power up your pytest skills, PythonTest has a course for you.

Ryan Cheley joins me today to talk about some challenges of managing software teams, and how to handle them.
We end up talking about a lot of skills that are excellent for software engineers as well as managers.

Some topics discussed:

• handling code reviews
• asking good questions
• being honest about what you can't do with current resources and data
• discussing tradeoffs and offering solutions that can be completed faster than the ideal solution
• balancing engineering and managing
• making sure documentation happens
• remote teams
  • encouraging collaboration
  • encouraging non-work-related conversations
  • watching out for overworking

Sponsored by:

• The Complete pytest course is now a bundle, with each part available separately.
  • pytest Primary Power teaches the super powers of pytest that you need to learn to use pytest effectively.
  • Using pytest with Projects has lots of "when you need it" sections like debugging failed tests, mocking, testing strategy, and CI
  • Then pytest Booster Rockets can help with advanced parametrization and building plugins.
• Whether you need to get started with pytest today, or want to power up your pytest skills, PythonTest has a course for you.

Software engineers that move into leadership roles have a struggle between learning leadership skills, maintaining technical skills, and learning new leadership and technical skills.
Matt Makai went from individual contributor to developer relations to leadership in devrel.
We discuss how to stay technical, as well as dive into some results of his studies in how companies use developer relationship channels.

Sponsored by:

• The Complete pytest course is now a bundle, with each part available separately.
  • pytest Primary Power teaches the super powers of pytest that you need to learn to use pytest effectively.
  • Using pytest with Projects has lots of "when you need it" sections like debugging failed tests, mocking, testing strategy, and CI
  • Then pytest Booster Rockets can help with advanced parametrization and building plugins.
• Whether you need to get started with pytest today, or want to power up your pytest skills, PythonTest has a course for you.

Visual Testing has come a long way from the early days of x,y mouse clicks and pixel comparisons. Angie Jones joins the show to discuss how modern visual testing tools work and how to incorporate visual testing into a complete testing strategy.

Some of the discussion:

• Classes of visual testing:
  • problems with pixel to pixel testing
  • DOM comparisons, css, html, etc.
  • AI driven picture level testing, where failures look into the DOM to help describe the problem.
• Where visual testing fits into a test strategy.
• Combining "does this look right" visual testing with other test workflows.
• "A picture is worth a thousand assertions" - functional assertions built into visual testing.
• Baselining pictures in the test workflow.

Also discussed:

• automation engineer
• Test Automation University

Links:

• Test Automation University

Sponsored by:

• The Complete pytest course is now a bundle, with each part available separately.
  • pytest Primary Power teaches the super powers of pytest that you need to learn to use pytest effectively.
  • Using pytest with Projects has lots of "when you need it" sections like debugging failed tests, mocking, testing strategy, and CI
  • Then pytest Booster Rockets can help with advanced parametrization and building plugins.
• Whether you need to get started with pytest today, or want to power up your pytest skills, PythonTest has a course for you.

Building any software, including web apps and APIs requires testing.
There's automated testing, and there's manual testing.

In between that is exploratory testing aided by automation tools.

Michael Kennedy joins the show this week to share some of the tools he uses during development and maintenance.

We talk about tools used for semi-automated exploratory testing.
We also talk about some of the other tools and techniques he uses to keep Talk Python Training, Talk Python, and Python Bytes all up and running smoothly.

We talk about:

• Postman
• ngrok
• sitemap link testing
• scripts for manual processes
• using failover servers during maintenance, redeployments, etc
• gitHub webhooks and scripts to between fail over servers and production during deployments automatically
• floating IP addresses
• services to monitor your site: StatusCake, BetterUptime
• the affect of monitoring on analytics
• crash reporting: Rollbar, Sentry
• response times
• load testing: Locus

Links:

• Python Bytes Podcast
• Talk Python To Me Podcast
• Talk Python Training
• Postman
• ngrok
• StatusCake
• Better Uptime
• Rollbar
• Sentry
• Locust
• 12 requests per second in Python

Sponsored by:

• The Complete pytest course is now a bundle, with each part available separately.
  • pytest Primary Power teaches the super powers of pytest that you need to learn to use pytest effectively.
  • Using pytest with Projects has lots of "when you need it" sections like debugging failed tests, mocking, testing strategy, and CI
  • Then pytest Booster Rockets can help with advanced parametrization and building plugins.
• Whether you need to get started with pytest today, or want to power up your pytest skills, PythonTest has a course for you.