Introductory recommendations?

Testing RSpec
1

Hi all,

I’m with a team of engineers who are new to RSpec, and I’m looking for
some good introductory material. Ideally it would be something like the
two-part Railscast on Cucumber (
http://asciicasts.com/episodes/155-beginning-with-cucumber ) which
doesn’t assume detailed knowledge of TDD.

I found David C.'s Intro at
http://blog.davidchelimsky.net/2007/05/14/an-introduction-to-rspec-part-i/
… anything else that people would recommend?

Thanks much!

jon

2
3

The RSpec Book from Pragmatic Programmers is excellent IMO.

Best,
Carl

4

Thanks Andy and Carl. I’ve bought The RSpec Book and there’s a wealth
of good information, but the tutorial in Chapter 5 (“Getting Started
with RSpec”) starts with mock objects and the quirks of
should_receive.with … that seems like a pretty advanced place to start
for those who aren’t familiar with TDD (or BDD). I’m hoping for
something more straightforward.

jon

5

Pair with them. How big’s the team? Lots of ways you can do this.
If there are 5 other devs, you can pair with one each day, bam,
training in a week. If there are 10, you pair with 5 for one week,
then have those guys pair with the other guys over the next week
(rotating every day). Does anybody in your organization have any
experience with RSpec? It’s likely somebody’s played with it some.
Lean on them.

Pick up the RSpec book and pair as much as you can.

Pat

6

I agree that mocks are one of the harder concepts to grasp. In my case -
although I will probably get some flack - I created some simple real
objects first, then tried to mimic their behavior with mocks.

When you are first leaning sometimes I find it better to start with a
known real object then to see how to do it in cucumber or RSpec. Mind
you this is just training wheels to give you confidence in your mock
objects.

7

On Nov 25, 2009, at 6:38 pm, Matt W. wrote:

+1

And have a coding dojo ASAP. It’s much easier to learn when you’re having fun.

On 25 Nov 2009, at 18:07, Pat M. wrote:

Pair with them. How big’s the team? Lots of ways you can do this.

+2

+1 For the pairing, it’s the most efficient way to share knowledge. But
I suggest making it clear it’s training. I’ve done it where the other
person was under the impression that the point of the exercise to
produce production code, and became frustrated with how slow it is.

+1 For the Coding Dojo (which involves pairing anyway). Had no idea how
much fun these are until I ran one. It’s especially valuable for the
amount of cognitive dissonance it generates - pretty much every line of
code is a point of discussion.

I think that given the task of training a team of 5 now, I’d give
serious thought to a Coding Dojo on a Friday, then pairing with each
developer the next week. Or maybe, facilitating pairs pulled and
rotated from the team (ie three people at a workstation).

Ashley

–
http://www.patchspace.co.uk/
http://www.linkedin.com/in/ashleymoran

8

Thanks all for the feedback, excellent suggestions!

9

+1

And have a coding dojo ASAP. It’s much easier to learn when you’re
having fun.

On 25 Nov 2009, at 18:07, Pat M. wrote:

Pat

http://asciicasts.com/episodes/155-beginning-with-cucumber ) which
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

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cheers,
Matt

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