17th March 2021
When you have to mock a collaborator, avoid using the Mock object directly. Either use mock.create_autospec() or mock.patch(autospec=True) if at all possible. Autospeccing from the real collaborator means that if the collaborator's interface changes, your tests will fail. Manually speccing or not speccing at all means that changes in the collaborator's interface will not break your tests that use the collaborator: you could have 100% test coverage and your library would fall over when used!
Recent articles
- Claude Opus 4.8: "a modest but tangible improvement" - 28th May 2026
- I think Anthropic and OpenAI have found product-market fit - 27th May 2026
- Notes on Pope Leo XIV's encyclical on AI - 25th May 2026