NH Python Group Project Night - Why Good Developers Write Bad Tests

Why Good Developers Write Bad Tests

Most developers still approach tests with the same old techniques they use for production code. But test code is not like other code. To write it well, we need to reexamine the principles and goals that define our best practices.

In this talk, I’ll discuss:

-> What separates good tests from bad ones
-> Why you should think twice before refactoring test functions
-> How to identify anti-patterns in tests that hide bugs
-> Why your test names are probably too short
-> Why you should embrace magic numbers

Michael Lynch is a software developer and blogger. He has worked as a software engineer at Microsoft and Google, and as a security engineer at NCC Group. He’s the founder and CEO of TinyPilot, a company that makes open source remote management devices.

You can read about his adventures in entrepreneurship and programming at on his blog at mtlynch.io and on Twitter @deliberatecoder.