Test-Driven Development With Python

Earlier this year, I was approached by the editor of Software Developer's Journal to write a Python-related article. I was quite flattered by the opportunity, but, being extremely busy at the time with work and family life, I was hesitant to agree. However, after much discussion with my wife and other important people in my life, I decided to go for it.

I had a lot of freedom to choose a topic to write about in the article, along with a relatively short timeline. I think I had two weeks to write the article after finally agreeing to do so, and I was supposed to write some 7-10 pages about my chosen topic.

Having recently been converted to the wonders of test-driven development (TDD), I decided that should be my topic. Several of my friends were also interested in getting into TDD, and they were looking for a good, simple way to get their feet wet. I figured the article would be as good a time as any to write up something to help my friends along.

I set out with a pretty grand plan for the article, but as the article progressed, it became obvious that my plan was a bit too grandios for a regular magazine article. I scaled back my plans a bit and continued working on the article. I had to scale back again, and I think one more time before I finally had something that was simple enough to not write a book about.

Well, that didn't exactly turn out as planned either. I ended up writing nearly 40 pages of LibreOffice single-spaced, 12pt Times New Roman worth of TDD stuff. Granted, a fair portion of the article's length is comprised of code snippets and command output.

Anyway, I have permission to repost the article here, and I wanted to do so because I feel that the magazine formatting kinda butchered the formatting I had in mind for my article (and understandably so). To help keep the formatting more pristine, I've turned it into a PDF for anyone who's interested in reading it.

So, without much further ado, here's the article! Feel free to download or print the PDF as well.