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

I do test


If you are coming from the I don't test section and are now convinced to do test-driven development, then congratulations! You know the basics of test-driven development, but there are some more things you should learn before you will be able to efficiently use this methodology.

This section describes a few problems developers bump into when they write tests and some ways to solve them. It also provides a quick review of popular test runners and tools available in the Python community.

unittest pitfalls

The unittest module was introduced in Python 2.1 and has been massively used by developers since then. But some alternative test frameworks were created in the community by people who were frustrated with the weaknesses and limitations of unittest.

These are the common criticisms that are often made:

  • The framework is heavy to use because:

    • You have to write all your tests in subclasses of TestCase

    • You have to prefix the method names with test

    • You are encouraged to use assertion methods provided...