Re: [PhillyOnRails] rspec slides

[Cassius Rosenthal <cassius@xmodulation.com>]

Geography prevented me from making it to the RSpec presentation last 
night.  (v_v) 

At MESDA's RubyUG this past August, I gave a 2-hour presentation on 
RSpec.  I used RSpec & BDD to test the Core randomness function using 
the chi-squared test; then I used RSpec & BDD to make the rails app into 
a simple quote CMS that hit up AWS for extra book info.

I don't have any slides, because I wrote the code during the presentation.

My conclusion --which I hope Colin will comment on-- is that rSpec has 
many drawbacks, but we should all be using it anyway.  Disadvantages of 
rSpec/BDD:
* breaks DRY, which is also a Rails convention
* slows development for experienced coders
* does not suggest good tests
* differentiation between 'good' and 'bad' test is not implied by syntax
* model tests seems solid, but controller tests seem excessive 
(map.resoures.should_not be_trusted =>?), and view tests don't seem 
meaningful
* trivial changes to schema often will require non-trivial changes to 
model specs
* doesn't offer integration tests, although you can simulate them -- 
documentation suggests using selenium instead of RSpec

Why we should use it anyway:
* it is becoming the convention; we must all conform to the conventions, 
or else the power of a convention-based framework weakens, and we all 
suffer; yes, using Rails is like belonging to a commonwealth -- abide 
and enjoy the benefits, or else you justify any retaliation that the 
commonwealth visits upon you.

(^_^)

Thanks!
-Casey


Colin A. Bartlett wrote:
> Thanks to all who came out last night for my RSpec presentation.
>
> For those that missed it, my slides are online on our blog. (link 
> below) But they probably won't be that useful because they're mostly 
> silly pictures and a few code snippets.
>
> Colin

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