As many people have doubtless read, PyCon '08 has announced the tutorial sessions. This year, Grig and I are doing a workshop-tutorial on testing rather than a teaching-tutorial; what this means is that our tutorial will focus on actually applying testing tools effectively to your source code.

We're billing this tutorial as "Inexpensive Consulting with Grig and Titus". As we say in the tutorial announcement:

"Bring your tired (code), huddled (unit tests),
and cranky AJAX to us; we'll help you come up with tactics,
techniques, and infrastructure to help solve your problems."

Both Grig and I have developed a number of approaches and thought patterns that we'd like to share with people who are having a tough time with testing -- for whatever reason. And we'd like to share them in what we hope to be the most effective way, by working with you on them.

However, we need to hear from participants. You can't just slap us with 5k LoC and expect us to grok it instantly; we'd like at least a few day's notice ;). So, if you're planning to attend the tutorial, please think about what you want to hear about, and plan to send us some source code to work on a week or two before PyCon. (Code that should work on Linux or Mac OS X is preferred...) If you're having specific problems, let us know; otherwise, we'll try to figure out how we would start testing your project.

We got an evening slot for the tutorial, which is all to the good; that means we can go directly to the bar afterwards. We'd also like to invite attendees to have dinner with us before the tutorial, so that we can develop a bond (and get you drunk) before the tutorial. Speaking solely for myself, I'm also happy to consult inexpensively over a glass of beer or scotch at pretty much any time. So please don't be a stranger!

Incidentally, Noah and Shannon both have good things to say about our tutorial (although I suppose if you're James Bennett Noah's opinion may not be persuasive ;). I'm looking forward to the steel cage match, myself; my money's on Noah, who is quite the brute.)

--titus

Legacy Comments

Posted by Terry Peppers on 2008-01-10 at 10:27.

Titus,     I'm going to have my team here come up with some ideas in
the next couple of weeks, review them, get them cleaned up and passed
to you as soon as I can.