Albina93 / backend-benchmarking-assessment

Fix up some slow code to pass timing tests.

Benchmarking (aka "I don't have time for this")

Imagine that you've been working on this program on a team of developers. You've done all the right things up until now, including writing unittests.

Unfortunately, a previous teammate not only committed code that made the benchmarking tests fail, but they force-pushed to master after rewriting the git history, so you can't simply go back in the history to fix things. Especially since, in the process of ruining the timings, the developer did manage to implement features that weren't there before.

Your task is to modify anagrams.py such that the tests pass again. If the problem isn't obvious to you by visually examining the anagrams.py module, consider using the profiling techniques that you learned about in the lessons to pin down the problem. Using a debugger may also help you to get a handle on exactly why things are slow.

Skipped unit test

If you look at the test case, you'll notice that the test_long unit test is currently being skipped. That's because if it were to run with the current implementation of find_anagrams it would take several minutes to complete. We suggest that you try and get the test_short to pass first, then remove the @unittest.skip line and ensure that the tests still pass.

Testing

You can run the tests from the command line with the unittest framework. From the top level directory of the assignment, use the following command:

% python -m unittest discover

VS Code also has a built-in test discovery feature, but it requires you to enable test discovery in the settings. Read this article for more information about how to configure VS Code for automatic test discovery.

Be sure to select the configuration for unittest, and not nose or pytest because these are third-party libraries that you would have to install. The file discovery pattern to configure is test_*.py.

PR (Pull Request) Workflow for this assignment

1. Fork this repository into your own personal GitHub account.
2. Clone your own repo to your local development machine.
3. Create a separate branch named dev and checkout the branch.
4. Commit your changes, then git push the branch back to your own GitHub account.
5. From your own GitHub repo, create a pull request (PR) from your dev branch back to your own master.
6. Copy/Paste the URL link to your PR as your assignment submission.
7. Your grader will post code review comments inline within your pull request in your GitHub account. Be sure to respond to any comments and make requested changes. RESUBMIT a new link to your PR after making changes. This is the code review iteration cycle.