Solving Problems Using Code
Posted by Aly Sivji in Quick Hits
I started my first tech job at a large corporation. We have lots of internal tools and systems that allow us to solve large-scale data problems. It's been an interesting change from startup life where platforms weren't as mature, where systems weren't as integrated into workflows and processes.
While I'm …
Posted by Aly Sivji in Deep Dives
Programming is writing code to solve problems. Software Engineering is the practice of using a structured process to solve problems. As engineers, we want to have a codebase we can change, extend, and refactor as required. Tests ensure our program works as intended and that changes to the codebase do …
Posted by Aly Sivji in Quick Hits
Python 3.7 was released a few weeks back. Lots of new features in this minor release: data classes, new breakpoint keyword, dicts preserving insertion order, amongst others.
One feature that hasn't got as much press, or really any press, is an update to the unittest.mock module in the Standard Library. Starting in Python 3.7, instances of Mock
Posted by Aly Sivji in Quick Hits
Testing is one of my favourite things about programming. There is nothing like the piece of mind that comes from being able to modify code without having to worry about breaking something.
Like most Python programmers, I started testing using the PyUnit framework (aka unittest) included in Python's Standard Library. PyUnit is part of the xUnit
Posted by Aly Sivji in Quick Hits
In Python, functions are objects. This means we can return them from other functions.
In this Quick Hit, we will use this property of functions to mock out an external API with fake data that can be used to test our internal application logic.
Note: I previously used Python functions to simulate the behavior of a case statement