Best Practices for Debugging, Testing and Maintenance

Experienced programmers know that good programming involves a lot more than writing code. Python offers an established set of techniques from several areas: Debugging is not an extraordinary activity, but certain tools and procedures are available. E.g. automated tests ensure that bugs don’t come back. Finally, maintenance practices keep programs healthy for a long period of time. As a program grows, these best practices become more and more important.

The inexperienced programmer is often unaware of the tools available to make Python programs more stable. This talk provides an overview of accepted best practices for debugging, testing, and maintenance, and provides hints what kind of project they are applicable to.

The talk draws a map of tools and practices, including:

• pdb
• PEP8
• py.test
• pyscaffold
• virtualenv
• Sphinx