refactoring, unit testing, ant, etc.

[Dave Rose]

Hello all
I've been learning Python for the past few months, reading tutorials and
postings here. I've bought the personal Komodo then downloaded Eclipse with
Pydev. IDLE also is a staple of everyday use.

~10 years ago, I had CS as a minor in college. I learned some C and modula-2
to name the relevent languages. Back then I was compiling on a VAX. Much
different than today.

I was hoping someone could guide me a bit with current-day practices. I've
been pythoning along, but I hear about things I don't know about (re-factoring,
unit-testing, debugging, ant build tools) and I don't know how they're
applicable to make my life easier. Tutorials didn't shed too much light --
they make it seem to be more work than I need now.

To be clear, I've used debuggers in the past, but it seems when I set break-
points, the Eclipse just skips merrily past them, or steps at every line, and
for wxPython, that's annoying given all the support libraries. I also use
wxPython and wxGlade, so those seem to ignore debug mode completely for some
reason.

Can someone please shed some light onto how I should really use my IDE to
make my life more enjoyable? I feel I just don't know how to use the tools
that are available, and that's frustrating.

Thanks so much!
Dave

 

[John Roth]

Hello all
I've been learning Python for the past few months, reading tutorials and
postings here. I've bought the personal Komodo then downloaded Eclipse
with
Pydev. IDLE also is a staple of everyday use.

~10 years ago, I had CS as a minor in college. I learned some C and
modula-2
to name the relevent languages. Back then I was compiling on a VAX. Much
different than today.

I was hoping someone could guide me a bit with current-day practices.
I've
been pythoning along, but I hear about things I don't know about
(re-factoring,
unit-testing, debugging, ant build tools) and I don't know how they're
applicable to make my life easier. Tutorials didn't shed too much
light --
they make it seem to be more work than I need now.

To be clear, I've used debuggers in the past, but it seems when I set
break-
points, the Eclipse just skips merrily past them, or steps at every line,
and
for wxPython, that's annoying given all the support libraries. I also use
wxPython and wxGlade, so those seem to ignore debug mode completely for
some
reason.

Can someone please shed some light onto how I should really use my IDE to
make my life more enjoyable? I feel I just don't know how to use the
tools
that are available, and that's frustrating.

It's actually not an IDE issue (well, not much of one). I never use
the debugger. The next thing to learn is probably Test Driven Development.
Kent Beck's book (Test Driven Development by Example) has an extended
example in Python as the second section.

TDD is simply the practice of writing a test, then writing the code to make
it pass, then writing another test and so forth. As long as you make sure
all the tests keep passing, whenever one of them breaks it's probably the
last edit you made, which makes it real easy to figure out what the problem
is and fix it.

The easiest way to ease into refactoring is to ruthlessly eliminate
duplication
in your programs. One of the really interesting things about this is that
you
can frequently see the right abstractions and design patterns just emerge
without having to design them up front. Doesn't always happen, but it does
often enough to be really gratifying.

The Python library contains a module named unittest which is the Python
equivalent of JUnit etc. I normally run my test suite out of a command line
that I keep open while I'm working. I think PyDev in Eclipse has support
for it, but since I don't use that I'm not at all sure.

John Roth