Meet the Maintainers: Ned Batchelder (coverage.py) - the story behind Python code coverage

Ned Batchelder (nedbat), creator and long-time maintainer of coverage.py, joins Push to Talk | Meet the Maintainers to share his path into programming and open source and the real story behind one of Python’s most popular testing tools. We talk about the journey to coverage.py, the turning points that shaped it, and why the measurement of the library is only 94%.

What's inside?

0:00 Intro

00:55 Getting into programming

01:30 Why open source

02:25 The origin story of coverage.py

03:55 Did you expect coverage.py to take off?

04:55 How coverage.py works (in one paragraph)

06:40 Unusual and quirky use cases

07:30 Performance impact in production

07:50 Coverage targets and chasing numbers

09:05 Coverage.py’s own coverage percentage

10:45 Toughest technical challenges and bugs

11:40 Computer science problems behind coverage.py

12:50 Working with the coverage.py community

13:45 Trusting outside help and issue triage

14:25 Saying no to feature requests

16:25 coverage.py vs pytest-cov

17:40 If coverage.py had a personality

18:05 The sleepy snake mascot story

18:50 A message to the community

Surprise us: how are you using coverage.py?