#144: Are you mocking me? It won't work!

Sponsored by DigitalOcean: pythonbytes.fm/digitalocean

Chris #1: Why your mock doesn’t work

• Ned Batchelder
• TDD is an important practice for development, and as my team is finding out, mocking objects is not as easy at it seems at first.
• I love that Ned gives an overview of how Mock works
• But also gives two resources to show you alternatives to Mock, when you really don’t need it.
• From reading these articles and video, I’ve learned that it’s hard to make mocks but it’s important to:
  • Create only one mock for each object you’re mocking
  • that mocks only what you need
  • have tests that run the mock against your code and your mock against the third party

Mahmoud #2: Vermin

• By Morten Kristensen
• Rules-based Python version compatibility detector
• caniuse is cool, but it’s based on classifiers. When it comes to your own code, it’ll only tell you what you tell it.
• If you’ve got legacy libraries, or like most companies, an application, then you’ll need something more powerful.
• Vermin tells you the minimum compatible Python version, all the way down to the module and even function level.

Brian #3: The nonlocal statement in Python

• Abhilash Raj
• When global is too big of a hammer.

• This doesn’t work:

      def function():
          x = 100
          def incr(y):
              x = x + y
          incr(100)
  

• This does:

      def function():
          x = 100
          def incr(y):
              nonlocal x
              x = x + y
          incr(100)
          print(x)
  

Chris #4: twitter.com/brettsky/status/1163860672762933249

• Brett Cannon
• Microsoft Azure improves python support
  • 2 key points about the new Python support in Azure Functions:
    • it's debuting w/ 3.6, but 3.7 support is actively being worked on and 3.8 support won't take nearly as long, and
    • native async/await support!

Mahmoud #5: Awesome Python Applications update

• Presented at PyBay 2019
• Slides/summary (video forthcoming): http://sedimental.org/talks.html#ask-the-ecosystem-lessons-from-250-foss-python-applications
• 250+ applications, dating back to 1998 (mailman, gedit)
• 95% of applications have commits in 2019
• 65% of applications support Python 3 (even the ones with a long history!)
• Other interesting findings
• Presenting these findings and more at PyGotham 2019. NYC in early October.

Brian #6: pre-commit now has a quick start guide

• Wanna use pre-commit but don’t know how to start? Here ya go!
• Runs through
  • install
  • configuration
  • installing hooks
  • running hooks against your project
• I’d like to add
  • Add hooks to your project one at a time
  • For each new hook
    • add to pre-commit-config.yml
    • run pre-commit install to install hook
    • run pre-commit run --``all-files
    • review changes made to your project
      • if good, commit
      • if bad
      • revert
      • modify config of tools, such as pyproject.toml for black, .flake8 for flake8, etc.
      • try again

Extras

Chris:

• Humble Bundle by No Starch supports the Python Software Foundation
• https://codechalleng.es/ released Newbie Bites… challenges that are intended for people brand new to python. [direct link]

Mahmoud:

• PyGotham 2019 October (Maintainers Conf in Washington DC, too)
• Real Python Pandas course

Brian:

• http://py3readiness.org/ shows 360 of the top downloaded Python packages are all Python 3 ready.

Jokes

• I was looking for some programming one liners online; looked on a reddit thread; read a great answer; which was “any joke can be a one-liner with enough semicolons.”
• A SQL statement walks into to a bar and up to two tables and asks, “Mind if I join you?”