Pages tagged “coding”

12 Aug 2014

Patch updates in pinned Python packages

A post about Python programming with a tongue-twisting title… Most Python projects rely on libraries (packages) from elsewhere, in particular from PyPI. Although it means you have to manually check for new versions of this third-party code, it’s a good idea to explicitly “pin” the version of each dependency, and this is usually done in a file called requirements.txt. This way, you know that what you use in development is the same as what you deploy.

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16 Jul 2014

Automatic testing FTW

When you’re building something made of software (!), it’s widely-accepted best practice to write tests for it. Nothing new there. Attending an excellent event in Cambridge last week, a superb presentation by Tim Perry from Softwire made me realise something else though. Writing tests makes your application more secure. This sounds trivial, but I mean tests like “does the widget do what it’s supposed to do” tests, not “does the app refuse log in if the password is wrong”.

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