What You Will Learn

• Why testing is one of the most important, valuable skills relied on every day by the best software developers on the planet
• The two main categories of automated tests... their key differences, what they're great at, and why it's important to never mix them up
• The undocumented secret idiom that will save you tons of frustrating troubleshooting time
• The most important assertion type that Python's unittest module provides, and what it's secretly doing "under the hood"
• The fastest, most accurate, and most productive way to interpret a test failure report
• A comparison of the four main testing frameworks in the Python ecosystem, and their individual strengths, weaknesses and trade-offs
• How to ensure you NEVER miss running a test
• Important vocabulary and terms that are aggressively undocumented
• What a "test" means, what it doesn't, and how this is commonly misunderstood
• How to save time running tests as you debug your application
• A full and thorough survey of Python's dozens of distinct assertion types
• The most important assertion types to fully and deeply understand... and which you can safely ignore
• Different strategies for writing and managing your process of writing tests
• The difference between "test-driven development" and "writing unit tests"... how they're completely separate... and how they can work together
• The pros and cons of doing test-driven development, versus other techniques for writing your tests
• My private, near-effortless, top-secret technique for using test-driven development with version control, that can dramatically amplify the quality of your code with shocking ease

• The "spooky" technique for reaching deep inside the internals of unwelcoming, hostile code... punching your mock event into components that seem actively hostile to dependency injection
• Insights in how to design your functions, methods and classes to trigger useful and meaningful error messages
• A deep-dive into handling expected exceptions in your unit tests
• A detailed "case study" of writing tests for a complex class and its fixtures
• Understanding "test fixtures"... when to use them... when to avoid them... and how to express them in your test code
• Practical advice on what to do as your tests "bulk up" and take longer and longer to run
• The best way to test functions with many complex inputs and edge cases
• A valuable and powerful testing feature added in Python 3... and the best strategies for getting the most out of it
• A thoughtful, insight-packed analysis on dealing with code dependencies
• A clear awareness of the poorly-understood distinctions between so-called "stubs" and "fakes"
• A high-level understanding of the "Mock", and its critical role in testing complex software
• Navigating the churning sea of misinformation on the best ways to use mocks, getting to the key insights that give you clear intuition in how to use them
• The secret tool that massively improves the value of mocks in Python, that almost no one uses... but completely solves the biggest problems you face in using mocks
• The different strategies for getting the most out of mocks in different coding situations
• Throughout the course, detailed and realistic example code illustrating how to apply Python's tools for testing to a wide range of coding situations
• A frank, balanced, and thorough discussion on when to use mocks... when to avoid them... and how
• The WORST thing that can INFECT to your ENTIRE CODE BASE when you use mocks incorrectly... how to avoid it, how to spot it developing, and what to do if you find your codebase infected
• The big secret benefit of TDD that no one EVER talks about. It's huge

Course Videos

1. The Game Plan: An overview of what you'll learn in the course, and how we'll proceed.

2. Testing Foundations: A fast-pace introduction to the core powerful ideas the entire topic of the course is built on.

3. Richer Unit Testing: Building on the foundation to create more sophisticated, powerful tests.

4. Test-Driven Development: An important and compelling process for writing automated tests, letting you create robust, high-quality software every time.

5. More Assertion Types: How to take advantage of Python's dozens of specialized, laser-focused assertion types.

6. Fixtures: Essential for complex integration and unit tests, as well as a priceless test-code-organization tool.

7. Unit Vs. Integration Tests: The most important distinction to think about for different kinds of automated test.

8. Subtests: A little-known, valuable tool for comprehensively testing complex functions with many edge cases.

9. Mock Objects: An innovative introduction to the concept of testing mocks, with an emphasis on clarity and practical use.

10. Patching With Mocks: A radically delightful technique for injecting mock components deep into any library, class or sub-system.

11. Mocking Strategies, Pros and Cons: A high-level, thoughtful discussion on the most productive strategies for using mocks... and when to avoid them entirely.

12. Overview Of Pytest: Teaching how to apply all the lessons of the course to the most popular testing framework outside of Python's standard library.

What's Included

1. Over 4 hours of instructional video

2. Extensive hands-on coding exercises ("Labs")

3. Full solutions

4. Lifetime access...

5. With all future updates and additions.

The Requirements

1. Basic understanding of object-oriented Python.

2. A recent version of Python 3.

3. About 9 hours to watch and re-watch videos, and do the "labs" (coding exercises).

4. Willingness to apply what you learn to the Python code you write outside of class.