From: Josh Cheek Date: 2010-06-08T02:16:27+09:00 Subject: Re: Unit Testing good study material --0016e6dab5440ce290048873d57a Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 6:37 AM, Rick DeNatale wrote: > I'd recommend "The RSpec book" from the Pragmatic Programmers which is > currently in the last stages of their beta program, which means that > you can buy the book as a PDF and optionally get the printed book when > available. > It's been in the last stages of beta for a really long time now :( It's release date has been pushed back at least three times this year already. There was also supposed to be a book on RSpec by Apress but it seems nothing ever happened with that (it is alleged to already be released http://www.amazon.com/Foundations-RSpec-Behavior-driven-Development-Rails/dp/1590599225/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1275903384&sr=1-2-fkmr1) And Addison-Wesley was supposed to release a book on it back in April, but that hasn't happened and the book's page is now gone from Amazon. Back in Feb I was asking about these books ( http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/204576) Noone really had much to say. I enjoyed your blog about creating your own RSpec book from the beta PDF. ( http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/2009/09/12/and-now-for-something-completely-different-diy-bookbinding-on-the-cheap) And I have it since my boss pre-ordered. But I have a hard time motivating myself to try and read something that I feel like is going to be deprecated soon. I won't have the time or motivation to read it twice. @Lakshmana: the first chapter of Ruby Best Practices is about testing (Test::Unit) the book is not really aimed at people new to Ruby, but it has a lot of code examples, and you can download the PDF for free from http://rubybestpractices.com/ (if you're satisfied, you can support Open Source and the author, by purchasing it http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596523008/index.html) Although, I just glanced at the Pickaxe's chapter on unit testing, and I'm not sure whether RBP has more to offer (still, free to check it out). Still, don't get hung up on whether you understand every nut and bolt of everything. The Pickaxe's chapter looks like it should be good enough to get started, and it is more important that you incorrectly start, than that you correctly do not start. Once you get started, you'll have a better understanding of the domain, which will make it easier to learn from reading other resources later down the line. In other words, you can begin testing with just a bare minimum of tools, and you should. RSpec's documentation is also pretty good http://rspec.info/documentation/ And I feel like I ...oughta... mention shoulda, b/c there are a lot of Rubyists who like it, but I honestly know next to nothing about it, so I'll let someone else fill in those details. Here is their github, though ( http://github.com/thoughtbot/shoulda). I also feel like I should mention that there are two Peepcodes about RSpec, but a lot of the stuff in them is already deprecated and doesn't work, and it's especially frustrating when learning the unfamiliar, if you don't really know what something does, but it isn't working, and you aren't sure why not, or how big of a deal it is. NOTE: I just went to check it out, and they now have 4 peepcodes on BDD, including cucumber and mocking. The ones I watched say they have been updated, but I'm not sure if that was before or after I tried going through it. (http://peepcode.com/) --0016e6dab5440ce290048873d57a--