Re: [EuroPython] A 'Testing track'?

[Magnus Lycka]

Martijn Faassen wrote:
> Looking at the talks submitted for the frameworks track, there are 
> *five* talks about software testing (or in case of std contains a 
> significant portion about software testing), submitted by 5 different 
> people. I don't know why this is suddenly such a hot topic. 

I imagine it's a consequence of Python being used more in larger software 
projects, so testing becomes more relevant. A sign of adulthood? I saw 
that Jim Fulton and Tim Peters had a presentation of unit testing at 
PyCon as well, so it's not just us! :)

As someone who started his career as a (hardware) test engineer almost
twenty years ago, I think it's nice to see that this subject gets some
attention. Finally! ;)

> It could be a track all by itself. :)

Perhaps it would be a good thing to put them as a continous block 
in the frameworks track? (Or maybe that would just be too exhausing 
for people who like to follow all of them?)

> Some of these tests probably are better off in the tutorials track. 

I actually found it a bit difficult to know what track I should put 
my talk proposals in. (One is about testing.)

I've felt that a tutorial is something more practical and hands-on 
than my talks. My ambition is to give impulses about things to do, 
show where to find more information, and to help my audience realize 
the use cases and limitations of different approaches or frameworks.
They aren't "how to program with X" walktroughs.

On the other hand, my talks aren't about *one* particular framework or 
library. It's more "when do I use this" than "how do I use this", so
it's not exactly right for the frameworks track either...

It seems some of the other testing talks have more of a tutorial 
nature, while still being about one particual framework!

Oh well, it's usually like this when we try to put things in little
boxes. Some things belong in several boxes, and some don't belong
in any box... I feel this every time I try to organize the papers in 
my office. ;)

I remember thinking already last year, that I didn't quite understand
the red lines in all the tracks, but I didn't come up with any better
division, and I still haven't. There are lots of potential talks about
programming with Python that aren't really tutorials, but not really
about a particular framework either.

Maybe Jacob, an international expert in Library Science, could sort 
out these categorization issues better? ;)

> I'll 
> try to negotiate with Jacob to move 'm over. I also think there is 
> enough overlap between some of the talks forcing me to drop one or two.

Really? It seems to me that they all have fairly different scopes.
I could imagine that a few are a bit long though...

My talk is a 30 minute introductory overview aimed at showing how 
Python can be useful for testing in various software develpoment 
contexts, and what module or practice to use depending on various 
factors.

Schwartzer's talk is an hour (a bit long?) of unit testing with 
mock objects for advanced users.

The talk "A Better Test Runner" is (as far as I understand) about
a new test runner for unit tests, i.e. a program that runs unit
tests and collect and present test results. (Seems like a small 
subject for 30 minutes though--my own testrunner is 11 lines of 
code. ;)

The "std" talk covers (among other things) a new alternative to 
using the standard unittest module, but I imagine that both the
test runner and the mock object approach are fairly orthogonal
to that.

The TextTest talk is about a framework for automated acceptance
tests, which is an entirely different cup of tea than unit testing.

Ok, I suppose that several talks will briefly raise questions such 
as "Why do we test software?" and "Why should we automate our 
tests?", but I doubt that a lot of time will be spent on that, 
and getting different opinions on a subject isn't bad...

Four of the talks will describe unittesting in one way or another,
and my talk will mention at least one alternative to TextTest.
It still seems to me that they complement each other pretty well
though. After all, there are plenty of talks that touch subjects 
such as performance, databases, web programming or Zope...

-- 
Magnus Lycka, Thinkware AB
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