Brian Okken
Software Engineer, also on Python Bytes and Python People podcasts
Appears in 222 Episodes
223: Writing Stuff Down is a Super Power
Taking notes well can help to listen better, remember things, show respect, be more accountable, free up mind space to solve problems.This episode discussesthe benefit...
222: Import within a Python package
In this episode we're talking about importing part of a package into another part of the same package.We'll look at: `from . import module` and `from .module import so...
221: How to get pytest to import your code under test
We've got some code we want to test, and some tests.The tests need to be able to import the code under test, or at least the API to it, in order to run tests against i...
220: Getting the most out of PyCon, including juggling - Rob Ludwick
PyCon US is just around the corner. I've asked Rob Ludwick to come on the show to discuss how to get the most out of your PyCon experience. There's a lot to do. A lot...
219: Building Django Apps & SaaS Pegasus - Cory Zue
I'm starting a SaaS project using Django, and there are tons of decisions right out of the gate. To help me navigate these decisions, I've brought on Cory Zue. Cory ...
218: Balancing test coverage with test costs - Nicole Tietz-Sokolskaya
Nicole is a software engineer and writer, and recently wrote about the trade-offs we make when deciding which tests to write and how much testing is enough.We talk abo...
217: Podcasting / SaaS / Work Life Balance - Justin Jackson
If you've ever thought about starting a podcast or a SaaS project, you'll want to listen to this episode. Justin is one of the people who motivated me to get started p...
216: ruff, uv, and Astral: Python tooling, much faster, with Rust
Charlie Marsh and team are using Rust to make Python tooling faster.Ruff can take the place of Flake8, isort, and Black, and so much more.uv can take the place of pip,...
215: Staying Technical as a Manager
Software engineers that move into leadership roles have a struggle between learning leadership skills, maintaining technical skills, and learning new leadership and te...
214: Python Testing in VS Code
If you haven't tried running automated tests, especially with pytest, in VS Code recently, you should take another look.The Python for VS Code interface for testing, ...
213: Repeating Tests
If a test fails in a test suite, I'm going to want to re-run the test. I may even want to re-run a test, or a subset of the suite, a bunch of times. There are a few p...
212: Canon TDD - by Kent Beck
In 2002, Kent Beck released a book called "Test Driven Development by Example".In December of 2023, Kent wrote an article called "Canon TDD".With Kent's permission, t...
211: Stamp out test dependencies with pytest plugins
We want to be able to run tests in a suite, and debug them in isolation, and have the behavior be the same. If the behavior is different in isolation vs in a suite, i...
210: TDD - Refactor while green
Test Driven Development. Red, Green, Refactor. Do we have to do the refactor part? Does the refactor at the end include tests? Or can I refactor the tests at any time?...
209: Testing argparse Applications
How do you test the argument parsing bit of an application that uses argparse?This episode covers:Design for Test: Structuring your app or script so it's easier to tes...
208: Tests with no assert statements
Why on earth would you want to write a test with no assert statements?After all, aren't assert statements how you decide wether a test passes or fails?In this episode,...
207: pytest course, pytest-repeat and pytest-flakefinder
New course: "The Complete pytest Course"pytest-repeat, which I'm starting to contribute toGive `--repeat-scope` a try. You can use it to change from repeating every te...
206: TDD in Context
TDD (Test Driven Development) started from Test First Programming, and has been around at least since the 90's. However, software tools and available CI systems have c...
205: pytest autouse fixtures
On a recent episode of PythonBytes, I suggested it's hard to come up with good examples for pytest autouse fixtures, as there aren't very many good reasons to use them...
204: Free Your Inner Nonfiction Writer - Johanna Rothman
Learn how to write nonfiction fast and well.Johanna Rothman joins the show to discuss writing nonfiction.Johanna's book: Free Your Inner Nonfiction Writer
203: Open Source at Intel
Open Source is important to Intel and has been for a very long time.Joe Curley, vice president and general manager of software products and ecosystem, and Arun Gupta, ...
202: Using Towncrier to Keep a Changelog - Hynek Schlawack
Hynek joins the show to discuss towncrier. At the top of the towncrier documentation, it says "towncrier is a utility to produce useful, summarized news files (also kn...
201: Avoid merge conflicts on your CHANGELOG with scriv - Ned Batchelder
Last week we talked about the importance of keeping a changelog. This week we talk with Ned Batchelder about scriv, a tool to help maintain that changelog.Scriv "is a ...
200: Keep a CHANGELOG
A changelog is a file which contains a curated, chronologically ordered list of notable changes for each version of a project. This episode is about what a changelog i...
199: Is Azure Right for a Side Project? - Pamela Fox
For a web side project to go from "working on desktop" to "live in the cloud", one decision that needs to be made is where to host everything. One option is Microsoft ...
198: Testing Django Web Applications - Carlton Gibson, Will Vincent
Django has some built in ways to test your application. There's also pytest-django and other plugins that help with testing. Carlton Gibson and Will Vincent from the D...
Python project trove classifiers - Do you need this bit of pyproject.toml metadata?
Classifiers are one bit of Python project metadata that predates PyPI. Classifiers are weird. They were around in setuptools days, and are still here with pyproject.to...
I am not a supplier
Should we think of open source components the same way we think of physical parts for manufactured goods? There are problems with supply chain analogy when applied to ...
What would you change about pytest?
Anthony Sottile and Brian discuss changes that would be cool for pytest, even unrealistic changes. These are changes we'd make to pytest if we didn't ahve to care abou...
The Good Research Code Handbook - Patrick Mineault
I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that software is part of most scientific research now. From astronomy, to neuroscience, to chemistry, to climate models...