CrossHair: Your Automatic Pair Programmer

The Python Podcast.__init__

• Episode: CrossHair: Your Automatic Pair Programmer
• Website: The Python Podcast.__init__
• Feed URL: https://www.podcastinit.com/feed/mp3/
• Published: 2021-02-16 03:55

One of the perennial challenges in software engineering is to reduce the opportunity for bugs to creep into the system. Some of the tools in our arsenal that help in this endeavor include rich type systems, static analysis, writing tests, well defined interfaces, and linting. Phillip Schanely created the CrossHair project in order to add another ally in the fight against broken code. It sits somewhere between type systems, automated test generation, and static analysis. In this episode he explains his motivation for creating it, how he uses it for his own projects, and how to start incorporating it into yours. He also discusses the utility of writing contracts for your functions, and the differences between property based testing and SMT solvers. This is an interesting and informative conversation about some of the more nuanced aspects of how to write well-behaved programs.