6 posts tagged with "python"

Introduction​

In the realm of software development, debugging is not only inevitable but can also be a complex endeavor.

Picture this: you're faced with the task of deciphering what's occurring within a server that's already humming along. Relaunching it with an attached debugger, the usual go-to method, isn't an option.

In this post, we'll navigate this challenge, zeroing in on how to debug an already running FastAPI server in the rag-stack project as an example. And for those on a tight schedule, here's a quick video tutorial breaking down the process:

Introduction​

Today, we're going to discuss an efficient way to set up your automated integration test workflows using Docker and Pytest.

Motivation​

In an era where software complexity is rapidly growing, developing an efficient testing strategy is more than a mere best practice — it's the bedrock of stable and reliable applications.

One common strategy involves using Docker to set up a test version of a software component, such as a vector database. There are two popular variations to this strategy, both of which have their own limitations.

Ever since large language models have taken the world by storm, I've been curious about how helpful these AI-powered chatbots can be to programmers like myself.

To put them to the test, I decided to build a couple of simple API endpoints using FastAPI and see how ChatGPT, Google Bard, and Bing Chat can assist me in the process.

Here's how they fared:

Every time I work on a Python project, I find myself having to look up the VS Code launch configuration to enable Pytest to step into 3rd party libraries when using the interactive debugger. It became quite frustrating, and I knew I couldn't be the only one facing this issue. So, I decided to create a video tutorial to share my knowledge and help fellow developers set up their projects more efficiently.

A lot of people I know will repeatedly alternate between writing an endpoint in their IDE and Postman/Swagger to test it. I do not like this workflow because of the constant context switching. I also find that it's easy to forget to test a scenario or to test the wrong scenario. I've found that it's much easier to test the API in the IDE itself.

I personally prefer the Test Driven Development (TDD) approach. I find that it helps me to write better code and to think about the API design before I actually start writing code. I also find that it helps me to write better tests and to think about the different scenarios that I need to test for.

So, how can we do this in VS Code?

Copilot is a service from GitHub that uses machine learning to help you write code. It was made generally available to the public on 21 June 2022.

As a person working in AI, I was very skeptical about this feature, and did not bother trying it for a long time. I expected it would generate code that is so buggy that it would be more productive to write the code by hand.

Until one day, a colleague whom I had a lot of respect for was singing praises about how Copilot helped him write a complex piece of code, and I decided to give it a try.