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The story behind Python code coverage

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Feb 11, 2026
19:00

Ned Batchelder (nedbat), creator and long-time maintainer of coverage.py, joins Push to Talk | Meet the Maintainers to share his path into programming and open source and the real story behind one of Python’s most popular testing tools. We talk about the journey to coverage.py, the turning points that shaped it, and why the measurement of the library is only 94%. What's inside? 0:00 Intro 00:55 Getting into programming 01:30 Why open source 02:25 The origin story of coverage.py 03:55 Did you expect coverage.py to take off? 04:55 How coverage.py works (in one paragraph) 06:40 Unusual and quirky use cases 07:30 Performance impact in production 07:50 Coverage targets and chasing numbers 09:05 Coverage.py’s own coverage percentage 10:45 Toughest technical challenges and bugs 11:40 Computer science problems behind coverage.py 12:50 Working with the coverage.py community 13:45 Trusting outside help and issue triage 14:25 Saying no to feature requests 16:25 coverage.py vs pytest-cov 17:40 If coverage.py had a personality 18:05 The sleepy snake mascot story 18:50 A message to the community Surprise us: how are you using coverage.py? Want to know more about open source libraries and their maintainers? Read our blog: https://ubuntu.com/blog/the-foundations-of-software-open-source-libraries-and-their-maintainers

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The story behind Python code coverage | NatokHD