Advanced Python Programming

Writing tests and benchmarks

Now that we have a working simulator, we can start measuring our performance and tune-up our code so that the simulator can handle as many particles as possible. As a first step, we will write a test and a benchmark.

We need a test that checks whether the results produced by the simulation are correct or not. Optimizing a program commonly requires employing multiple strategies; as we rewrite our code multiple times, bugs may easily be introduced. A solid test suite ensures that the implementation is correct at every iteration so that we are free to go wild and try different things with the confidence that, if the test suite passes, the code will still work as expected.

Our test will take three particles, simulate ...