16: Welcome to Test and Code

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This is a small episode.

I’m changing the name from the “Python Test Podcast” to “Test & Code”.
I just want to discuss the reasons behind this change, and take a peek at what’s coming up in the future for this podcast.

On October 21st of last year, I published episode 7 of this podcast. It is titled The Waterfall Model and “Managing the Development of Large Software Systems”.

That episode was a lot of work.

On Oct 25, just a few days later, I received an email sent through the contact form on pythontesting.net.

From Shane:

“PT007: The Waterfall Model …” was in my mind by far the
best Python Testing podcast so far!

I admit to bias because I love history, but even so I think it
was awesome to delve into the history of the most ancient of
software development models.

The mix of comment and fact is great, as the conversational tone
helps in what some crazy folks might otherwise consider a dry topic.

I’m curious if this will tie into the actual focus of the
podcast (Python Testing) somehow, but even if it stands
on its own… thanks! :)

Thank you Shane, I’m really glad you liked the episode.

I want to focus on the last sentence from Shane a bit.
“I’m curious if this will tie into the actual focus of the
podcast (Python Testing) somehow, …”

This doesn’t surprise me. It does pinpoint something I’ve been struggling with for some time with the podcast.

In episode 14 I interviewed Josh Kalderimis from Travis CI. We spent a bit of time just talking before we started the interview.

Josh asked me this: “Tell me a bit about yourself Brian. What is it that you do? What brings you to the Python community? When/how/why did you start this podcast?”

I’ve kept it and my answer in the show, but at the end, at time marker 54:00

At first I hated Python. And then mostly used it for testing at first.

And then I also thought it was really hard to compare all the different test frameworks. So I think I’ll write some blog posts and compare unittest, nose, pytest, and doctest for functional testing using the same code I’m testing in all frameworks so that people can see them side by side.

I started wanting to address a lot of topics like “how do you write a good test?”, becuase I noticed that everybody was coming to programming from different educational backgrounds and some people learned it on the job and there were huge education holes. Developers knew they should write unit tests but the didn’t really know how to. How to write a good one. And they really didn’t know how to write system level tests. A lot of development teams have no QA now. They just have the development team. And they don’t really know how to do that.

And so that’s the education hole I’m trying to fill with this podcast and with my writing right now. That’s me.

The reasons for choosing the domain name pythontesting.net are pretty clear from my first goal of covering Python test frameworks.

The reasons for naming the podcast the Python Test Podcast were partly to focus on the Python community that I love. And partly because I already had the domain name. And partly because I was hoping to draw some attention to my eBook and sell a few more copies.

However, I can’t say that I ever intended to solely focus on Python. Most of the real meaty content that needs to get covered does apply to Python developers and testers. But it also applies to every other language.

In order to stop confusing people, I’m changing the name of the podcast to “Test & Code”. I will still cover Python topics. I will still go into detail about the test frameworks in Python.

What changes mostly is that I will let myself stop feeling guilty every time I do an episode like the waterfall episode, where it doesn’t directly tie into Python.

As for the question of how development models relate to testing.
What does software development have to do with testing?
What if you turn it around and ask “what does testing have to do with software development?”. They are two sides to the same coin.
Test and Code.

What coming up in future episodes

Guests

I’ve got some great guests coming up.

I talked with Laura Gaetano about the Travis Foundation, about the services they provide and the projects they are involved with and support.

I talked with Joe Stump from Sprint.ly about software development processes in startups, how startups treat testing, and about finding and hiring great developers.

I will continue to bring on guests to talk about topics relevant to software development, testing, and really everything around those topics.

I’d love to get anyone and/or everyone from the pytest core development team on the show.

I’d like to get more people on that can talk about real life experiences with the project they are working on, either from small companies and startups or from large companies.

I want to know who you want on the show.

I brought Josh from Travis CI on because of a listener request.
That led to me interviewing Laura from the Travis Foundation.
That led me to an interest in exercism.io.
I’d really like to get Katrina Owen from that project on the show.

So keep those requests coming.

Topics

We’ve still got a lot to cover from my original list way back in episode 1.

Coming up soon-ish:

• Achieving behavior coverage with the help of equivalence partitioning and boundary analysis.
• Unit testing
• Continuing the series on Lean, most likely starting with waste.
• Waste
• Value
• Test Driven Development
• Frameworks
• pytest
• unittest
• nose
• doctest

Cadence

It’s no secret that my goal is to get one show out per week.
It’s also no secret that I don’t often hit that goal.

I am committed to getting at least one episode a month out.
That just seems lame saying that.
But it’s my reality right now.
This show is really important to me.
But it cannot come before my family or my full time job.

Also, I want to write more, and often I have to choose between writing and podcasting, and sometimes, writing has to win.

Domain names

This podcast is now named Test & Code.
The domain is still at pythontesting.net.
I also have registered testpodcast.com and testandcode.com.
Both point to pythontesting.net right now.
I don’t know if that will always be the case.

Twitter

A great way to get hold of me is through twitter.
I’m @brianokken, as well as @testpodcast.
I announce new shows on both of those.
The @brianokken account also has more personal stuff.

Support

I’ve got some wonderful supporters using Patreon to help support the show. Visit patreon.com/testpodcast.

Sponsors

I do have a couple of episodes coming up with sponsors.
Awesome.
If you are interested in sponsoring the show, get it touch with me.
I’m not hard to find.

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