dima

I'm subscribed to Adam Johnson's blog and usually really enjoy his writing - it's practical, deep, and no-bullshit. But one recent post, Python: sharing common tests in unittest, caught me off guard.

It describes a "neat" pattern: write reusable test logic in a base class, subclass it to test multiple objects, hiding the base class from unittest discovery. While the intent is fine - DRYing out duplicated test code - the result is fragile, confusing, and just not worth it.

Here's why.