[Pythonmac-SIG] Re: Pythonmac-SIG Digest, Vol 22, Issue 46

[Bob Ippolito]

On Feb 14, 2005, at 4:11 PM, Andrew Meit wrote:

>
> On Feb 14, 2005, at 3:04 PM, pythonmac-sig-request at python.org wrote:
>
>> And it seems that very often programmers never do get around to that 
>> 'rebuild and replace' stage, because as soon as they've reached 
>> working code it's considered 'done', and to then throw that code away 
>> and start all over again is anathema. Coming from a fine art 
>> background, I _know_ that if you've a day to draw a life picture, 
>> then the best way to spend that time is 'wasting' the first half on 
>> throwaway sketches and only sitting down to the final version in the 
>> final few remaining hours, not spend all day hammering away at this 
>> one single drawing from 9 till 5.
>
> -- YES, I once, when much younger, did Type (known for my Gutenberg 
> font work) and graphic design; and so "write and burn" method was 
> carried over to my coding as second nature. However, I found out in 
> programming world rarely was that method valued or wanted: "gotta 
> ship, now". 	Which brings up another point: testing. Does python 
> support robust testing tools or methods?? I code towards quality and 
> so an IDE needs to support that goal. :-)

There is plenty of Python software out there to facilitate testing: 
pychecker, the standard library unittest, py.test, ComfyChair, etc.  
I'm really not sure of any IDE that also has test runners, but that 
really isn't such a big deal.  It's Just Another Script.

-bob