181: Boost Your Django DX - Adam Johnson
03/01/22 • 27 min
2 Listeners
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.
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.
Previous Episode
180: Lean TDD
Lean TDD is an attempt to reconcile some conflicting aspects of Test Driven Development and Lean Software Development.
I've mentioned Lean TDD on the podcast a few times and even tried to do a quick outline at the end of episode 162.
This episode is a more complete outline, or at least a first draft.
If you feel you've got a good understanding of TDD, and it's working awesome for you, that's great. Keep doing what you're doing. There are no problems.
For me, the normal way TDD is taught just doesn't work. So I'm trying to come up with a spin on some old ideas to make it work for me. I'm hoping it works for you as well.
I'm calling the new thing Lean TDD. It's inspired by decades of experience writing software and influence from dozens of sources, including Pragmatic Programmer, Lean Software Development, Test-Driven Development by Example, and many blog posts and wiki articles.
The main highlights, however, come from the collision of ideas between Lean and TDD and how I've tried to resolve the seemingly opposing processes.
Links:
- Lean TDD | pythontest.com
- episode 162: Flavors of TDD
- What is Test Driven Development (TDD)? | Agile Alliance
- Test First Programming / Test First Development | pythontest.com
- episode 7: The Waterfall Model and “Managing the Development of Large Software Systems”
- episode 51: Feature Testing
- The testing renaissance — Twitter Engineering blog post about Feature Testing
- Lean software development - Wikipedia
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.
Next Episode
182: An Unorthodox Technical Interview and Hiring Process - Nathan Aschbacher
Don't you just love technical interviews, with someone who just saw your resume or CV 5 minutes ago asking you to write some code on a whiteboard. Probably code that has nothing to do with anything you've done before or anything you will do at the company.
No? Neither does Nathan Aschbacher.
So when he started building the team at his company, he decided to do things differently.
Hiring is one of the essential processes for building a great team.
However, it's a high noise, low signal process.
Nathan Aschbacher has a relatively unorthodox tech hiring approach.
He's trying to make it very humane, with a better signal to noise ratio.
Nathan is not intereseted in bizarre interview processes where the interviewer doesn't know anything about the interviewee beforehand, all people are asked the same questions, and people are asked to code on white boards.
Instead, he states "if the goal is to try to figure out if the person can do the work with your team, and your trying to build the team that you are adding this person to, they need to know what the team is like, and determine if they want to be part of the team, and the team needs to know what the person is like and if they would be addititve to the team.
So what's Nathan's process:
- Screening resumes and CVs, looking for internal motivation to become an expert at something.
- Basic phone screen, very informal.
- A couple 2-3 hour pairings with someone on the team with whatever they are working on.
- Debriefing both the candidate and the team afterwords.
- Giving the candidate an opportunity for a second impression and following up on difficulties during the pairings.
We discuss the process, and also:
- trying to remove the barriers to team integration
- treating people as humans
And of course, there's the story of how Nathan ended up interviewing someone with Zoo experience an no technical experience for a technical role. Of course, it was a misunderstanding of a job requirement around experience with ZooKeeper. But it's a good story.
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.
If you like this episode you’ll love
Episode Comments
Generate a badge
Get a badge for your website that links back to this episode
<a href="https://goodpods.com/podcasts/test-and-code-41514/181-boost-your-django-dx-adam-johnson-19755680"> <img src="https://storage.googleapis.com/goodpods-images-bucket/badges/generic-badge-1.svg" alt="listen to 181: boost your django dx - adam johnson on goodpods" style="width: 225px" /> </a>
Copy