Book Image

Expert Python Programming - Second Edition

By : Michał Jaworski
Book Image

Expert Python Programming - Second Edition

By: Michał Jaworski

Overview of this book

Python is a dynamic programming language, used in a wide range of domains by programmers who find it simple, yet powerful. Even if you find writing Python code easy, writing code that is efficient and easy to maintain and reuse is a challenge. The focus of the book is to familiarize you with common conventions, best practices, useful tools and standards used by python professionals on a daily basis when working with code. You will begin with knowing new features in Python 3.5 and quick tricks for improving productivity. Next, you will learn advanced and useful python syntax elements brought to this new version. Using advanced object-oriented concepts and mechanisms available in python, you will learn different approaches to implement metaprogramming. You will learn to choose good names, write packages, and create standalone executables easily. You will also be using some powerful tools such as buildout and vitualenv to release and deploy the code on remote servers for production use. Moving on, you will learn to effectively create Python extensions with C, C++, cython, and pyrex. The important factors while writing code such as code management tools, writing clear documentation, and test-driven development are also covered. You will now dive deeper to make your code efficient with general rules of optimization, strategies for finding bottlenecks, and selected tools for application optimization. By the end of the book, you will be an expert in writing efficient and maintainable code.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
Expert Python Programming Second Edition
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Chapter 10. Test-Driven Development

Test-Driven Development (TDD) is a simple technique to produce high quality software. It is widely used in the Python community, but it is also very popular in other communities.

Testing is especially important in Python due to its dynamic nature. It lacks static typing so many, even minute, errors won't be noticed until the code is run and each of its line is executed. But the problem is not only how types in Python work. Remember that most bugs are not related to bad syntax usage, but rather to logical errors and subtle misunderstandings that can lead to major failures.

This chapter is split into two parts:

  • I don't test, which advocates TDD and quickly describes how to do it with the standard library

  • I do test, which is intended for developers who practice tests and wish to get more out of them