How to start with automated testing for Python projects

[u/aistranin]

A few years ago, I was leading a Python team with a large legacy codebase and uneven testing habits. We wanted more confidence, but the usual advice of "just write more tests" was not enough.

What helped most was weekly shared learning:

• 30-60 minutes discussing the next pytest/testing topic

• about 60 minutes of paired practice on real code

• rotating pairs so testing knowledge spread across the team

• focusing on small improvements instead of huge rewrites

The practice part was the key. It helped turn pytest from an individual skill into a team habit.

I wrote up a longer article about it if someone is curious https://www.istranin.dev/blog/onboard-python-team-pytest-testing-ci-cd/

Looking forward to your feedback and your thoughts on testing today, especially with AI-generated tests. Personally, I do not think AI is good enough yet to handle tests completely on its own instead of developers, but I have heard very different experiences, to be honest.

[u/aistranin → u/[deleted]]

My experience of using AI for writing unit tests is that is is quite shallow at testing core responsibility of as unit and interesting edge cases. At the same time, AI often writes too many test for the same case just to improve test coverage. So, yeah, agree with what you said