In the last month (due to a project at work), I had the opportunity to level up my Python. I think it got to the point where I figured out the terms to search for to pull up Google's foo.bar contest. :) And not only did I level up my Python, but also I finally witnessed how useful unit tests are. This really isn't a writeup about the merits and necessities of writing unit tests so much as it is a declaration what I've learned firsthand.
At the beginning of my career, my manager handed me a book about test-driven development. Intimated by junit and the codebase I was jumping into, I flipped through the book but didn't glean much from it. Eventually, I forgot about it, and writing unit tests never became part of my development workflow during the first many years of my career. And that book is probably still collecting dust on that bookshelf in my cubicle, to this very day.
After joining a company where unit tests are taken very seriously, I had to bite the bullet and write unit tests that actually mattered. It's a little weird at first, because like most things in life, you build first, then test. This last month, I think I finally discovered just how much unit tests increase developer productivity. I had to do some major rewrites in a short amount of time, but I interleaved writing unit tests and developing the core functionality of my project. Even with the rewrites, the unit tests helped me catch a lot of things because I wrote them with the design and expectation of the entire project in mind.
Aside from that, I've learned how to use setuptools and generators. Nice little adventures.
At the beginning of my career, my manager handed me a book about test-driven development. Intimated by junit and the codebase I was jumping into, I flipped through the book but didn't glean much from it. Eventually, I forgot about it, and writing unit tests never became part of my development workflow during the first many years of my career. And that book is probably still collecting dust on that bookshelf in my cubicle, to this very day.
After joining a company where unit tests are taken very seriously, I had to bite the bullet and write unit tests that actually mattered. It's a little weird at first, because like most things in life, you build first, then test. This last month, I think I finally discovered just how much unit tests increase developer productivity. I had to do some major rewrites in a short amount of time, but I interleaved writing unit tests and developing the core functionality of my project. Even with the rewrites, the unit tests helped me catch a lot of things because I wrote them with the design and expectation of the entire project in mind.
Aside from that, I've learned how to use setuptools and generators. Nice little adventures.
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