From: Pat Maddox <pergesu@...>
Date: 2007-01-24T10:36:36+09:00
Subject: Re: I don't get rspec

On 1/23/07, Eric Hodel <drbrain@segment7.net> wrote:
> On Jan 23, 2007, at 16:26, James Edward Gray II wrote:
> > On Jan 23, 2007, at 6:10 PM, Joe Van Dyk wrote:
> >> What's wrong with zentest, specifically?
> >
> > You will probably understand better by watching the movie, but
> > zentest encourages you to make a test case for each class and a
> > test method for each method.
>
> Which will match up 1:1 if you factor your code well.

The point is that you shouldn't try to shoehorn your tests into this
1:1 approach.  You brought up the tutorial as an example of specs that
match up nicely with the code, but even that ends up with a few
contexts.  If you just have a StackTest class, you won't get the same
logical separation.  How many programmers are going to write an
EmpyStackTest class, a OneItemStackTest class,  a FullStackTest class,
etc?

As your behavior becomes more complex - by interacting with other
objects - you need to be able to drill a bit deeper with your
specifications.  I often have one complete context for an individual
method.  Not many programmers will create a new test class just to
spec a method.  And that doesn't mean that this method is too tightly
coupled to other objects, it just means that you need more
finely-grained specifications.

> BDD presents a method of thinking about test design to help you focus
> on better object design and object modeling.  Unit testing doesn't
> have this method of thinking built-in, you have to discover it.

The bottom line is that if you're using either Test::Unit or RSpec the
most effectively, you're probably doing things nearly the same way
that you would with the other framework.  The difference is that RSpec
guides you to the proper way.  Unit testing doesn't have the proper
thinking built-in, as you said.  The BDD guys give us a testing tool
with some of the lessons they've learned over the years built-in.
It's just a different path to the same place.

Pat