My first job was at a company that wrote software for hospitals. As you can imagine, our work needed to be really reliable — so we had an entire team dedicated to quality assurance (QA). Their job was to run our software for months at a time, given many different inputs, and to make sure that it didn’t cause trouble. I can tell you that the head of QA was the most feared person in my department. And yet, we all knew that his job was of utmost importance. If it weren’t for him, buggy software could go out the door, with catastrophic effects for people being treated in hospitals around the world.
More than 25 years have passed since I had that job. And while not every program directly affects people’s lives, there’s no doubt that software is hugely influential. Buggy programs can not only hurt people, but lose money, destroy documents, give incorrect projections, and use up valuable resources.
It’s no surprise, then, that testing continues to be really important. And while there are lots of people still working in QA, much of that burden is now shouldered by individual developers, who have to test the code that they wrote themselves. That’s right — you can test your own code, to make sure it does what it’s supposed to do (and doesn’t do what it’s not supposed to do).
Over the last few years, I’ve joined a large and growing number of Python developers using pytest — a test system written in Python, designed to be used by Python developers. And I have to say, pytest is truly amazing: It’s easy to learn, very powerful, and has a huge community that contributes a wide variety of plugins for everyone to use.
Earlier this month, I asked subscribers to my “Better developers” list what topics they would like to learn in a series of live courses I’m starting to offer. And overwhelmingly, people wanted to learn pytest.
I’m thus delighted to announce that on Sunday, September 13th, I’ll be teaching a live, four-hour online course about pytest: “Test your Python code with pytest” If you’ve always wanted to learn about testing in general, or pytest in particular, this course will jump-start you into understanding the hows (and whys) of testing your Python code.
Click here to join my “pytest” course
A few quick points:
- The course will take place at 6 p.m. in Israel (where I live), which is 4 p.m. in London, 11 a.m. Eastern, and 8 a.m. Pacific. I hope that you’ll be able to join me live, so that you can participate and ask questions.
- Even if you can’t join me live, the recording will be available to everyone who has enrolled. And that recording will be available forever — if you don’t have a chance to watch it right away, or want to review the material later on.
- The course is 4 hours long, but will include a good number of hands-on exercises.
You’ll walk out of this course knowing how to use pytest, and how to apply that knowledge to your own programs — making them more robust, and saving you time down the road.
I’m really excited about pytest, and also excited to offer courses in this new format. Please join me, and learn how to write better, more reliable code in less time.
For more info, and to register, go to https://store.lerner.co.il/pytest. Any questions? Just contact me at reuven@lerner.co.il or on Twitter as @reuvenmlerner.