The RSpec Book
Behaviour-Driven Development with RSpec, Cucumber, and Friends
by David Chelimsky, Dave Astels, Zach Dennis, Aslak Hellesøy, Bryan Helmkamp, Dan North · first published 2010
62% recommend38% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Teaches how to think about tests in Ruby, covering unit versus integration tests and testing behavior rather than implementation; often named as the go-to companion to Rails and Ruby learning for developers.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Provides information on developing Rails 3 applications using RSpec and Cucumber.
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The Rspec Book. Even though it advocates Cucumber (I kind of ignored that part), it really explains how to think about tests. How to approach unit tests, integration tests, and testing behavior not implementation. I…
on “A Case Against Cucumber” ↗Adding on to your comment, a friend let me read through a beta copy of The Rspec Book last year. At the time, only the first couple chapters were written and it was lacking a lot of content. It was a great resource though, and I would highly recommend it. The final release is due "Soon",…
on “Ask HN: How do people really test their code?” ↗You can't do better than mhartls book followed by The Rspec Book (Prag prog) to fully grok this concept. You'll have an "a-ha" moment at some point. I'm by no means an expert but feel free to hit me up and I'll see if I can help: dev@evan.co.nz
on “Offer HN: Help with Ruby on Rails” ↗I bought Hello Android, TDD screencast series & The RSpec Book. Amazing bargain!
on “The Pragmatic Bookshelf 40% Black Friday Sale” ↗Sorry for the late response. I would look at Agile Web Development With Rails (4th Ed), Programming Ruby (2nd Ed), and The RSpec Book.
on “If you were to pick one language to learn...” ↗…http://guides.rubyonrails.org/ (read these to really understand Rails) Books to read: Agile Web Development with Rails (newest edition, considered THE book on Rails) Programming Ruby (considered THE book on Ruby) The Rspec Book (about testing, super important to learn, AO3 gives free copies to coders there) Metaprogramming Ruby (great for understanding the intricacies of Ruby and how to bend it to your will) Crafting Rails…
on “Best syllabus to become a entry-level web developer?” ↗…out creating games in BASIC, then hacked around with PHP and got into writing bespoke plugins for a phpBB community. I also wrote a few patches for OpenTTD and learnt some C doing that. Next I got "The RSpec Book" and learnt about testing and Rails. I then went and did a CS degree, however I feel it didn't really give me anything I didn't already know - I have never needed to know what a red-black tree or hill…
on “Ask HN: How many "self-taught" programmers and how did you do it?” ↗…[4] for the same reasons as Forth, only more so. After reading about Smalltalk, I felt I began to understand the "Why" of Ruby. Ruby became many times richer with the context. 6. The weird one is The RSpec Book: Behavior Driven Development with RSpec, Cucumber and Friends. It's also the one that changed my thinking the most [caveat: it's also the most recently read]. I saw someone's "port" of RSpec to Clojure…
on “Ask HN: What are the best books that changed your life in 2015?” ↗…"Everyday Rails Testing with RSpec" https://leanpub.com/everydayrailsrspec * Noel Rappin, "Rails Test Prescriptions" http://pragprog.com/book/nrtest/rails-test-prescriptions * Chelimsky and friends, "The RSpec Book" http://pragprog.com/book/achbd/the-rspec-book Other resources? How did you learn TDD for Rails?
on “'Learn Ruby on Rails' is free today” ↗…read these seven books: * Agile Web development by Sam Ruby * CSS, the definitve guide * Head first software development * jQuery in Action * pragmatic git * The Rails Way by Obie Fernandez * The Rspec Book Granted, this is less Ruby then Rails specific. Best to you on your path, Alain
on “How to become a proficient Python programmer” ↗I am (I'm a beginner), and I agree. I'm actually reading The RSpec Book right now, and though I'm not far into the RSpec docs, it seemed to suggest using this sort of documentation.
on “RSpec Best Practices” ↗Thanks. I almost linked to the RSpec Book, but since I haven't read it myself, I didn't feel comfortable endorsing it. Good to know it's shaping up! Maybe I'll have to pick up a copy.
on “Ask HN: How do people really test their code?” ↗http://qconlondon.com/london-2014/speaker/Dan+North > The originator of Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD) and Deliberate Discovery, Dan has published feature articles in numerous software and business publications, and contributed to The RSpec Book: Behaviour Driven Development with RSpec, Cucumber, and Friends
on “Deliberate Advice from an Accidental Career” ↗Finishing Part I of The RSpec Book. The hands-on tutorial is giving me a feel for why BDD's advocates advocate BDD. It also giving me a feel for the cost of another layer of tooling on top of the "running code". Continuing: Coursera Modeling…
on “Ask HN: What are you working on this week?” ↗