This is a series of posts, following a talk I gave (twice - at Pycon-US 2023 and Pycon-IL 2024), about testing best (and not-so-best) practices.
The talk shares 10 practices that I had bad experience with, along with ways of avoiding them.
The main objective of the post series is to help you write tests that have a better ROI.
I’ll discuss different practices, different ways that we can work.
These practices affect us by changing the properties of our tests:
- Strength - how well they catch bugs
- Maintainability - how easy it is to work with them
- Performance - how fast they run
Starting with simple (but useful!), and moving on to more complex ideas:
- There are no tests (warm up)
- Untested tests
- The tests are not isolated
- No locality of behavior
- Unclear language
- Testing too many things
- Improper test scope
- Test doubles everywhere
- Slow tests
- Wrong priorities
Videos and slide decks from the talks
10 Ways To Shoot Yourself In The Foot With Tests - PyCon-US 2023 (English)
Given at Salt Lake City, Utah.
Slides: Slideshare PyCon US 2023
10 Ways To Shoot Yourself In The Foot With Tests - PyCon-IL 2024 (Hebrew)
Slides: Slideshare PyCon IL 2024