Hi,
Any responses to
http://blog.caboo.se/articles/2008/11/4/we-ve-stopped-using-rspec
? How much of this is due to legitimate bugs/problems versus
unfortunate circumstances? Feels kind of worrying that they haven’t
been able to make it work for them.
Cheers,
-Tom
On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 6:39 AM, Tom S. [email protected] wrote:
Hi,
Any responses to
Parked at Loopia ? How much
of this is due to legitimate bugs/problems versus unfortunate circumstances?
Feels kind of worrying that they haven’t been able to make it work for them.
Oh my, the end of world is near!
The gem dependency is a real problem. Coming from the Windows world
where we have to deal with DLL inter-dependency and loading issues, we
are quite familiar with these issues (not having the gem/library in
the server, loading it break other tasks, etc).
What is missing from the config.gem concept is the possibility to
specify the context in which these gems get loaded.
Why you need RSpec in production? why is that being loaded?
Even if you define rspec and rspec gems as your application
dependencies, they shouldn’t be forced on every environment, which
is the root of these issues.
Other issues like specs not being executed I can agree on that, I
found sometimes some before(:each) do not run, and sometimes they
do… when tried to track that down, the problem disappeared.
From that I have plenty of stories, but any application or tool of the
size of RSpec have these issues.
Take for example Test::Unit… is a 3K lines of code beast. mini-unit
from Ryan D. is around 600 lines and do the same stuff, much more
faster, and besides the war at ruby-core about it, I don’t hear anyone
ranting about the beast it is.
So: the defacto vs. the newcomer. The full of classes and
unpronounceable methods names vs. the descriptive ones.
Pick your framework.
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from
the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent
disinclination to do so.
Douglas Adams
On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 10:39 AM, Tom S. [email protected] wrote:
Hi,
Any responses to
Parked at Loopia ? How much
of this is due to legitimate bugs/problems versus unfortunate circumstances?
Feels kind of worrying that they haven’t been able to make it work for them.
I wish people would seek out the developers (mailing list, bug
tracker) before they go out and whine. See my comment in the blog
post.
Aslak
On 4 Nov 2008, at 13:25, aslak hellesoy wrote:
I wish people would seek out the developers (mailing list, bug
tracker) before they go out and whine. See my comment in the blog
post.
RSpec seems to be a victim of “when I do BDD wrong, RSpec makes my
tests fragile/confusing/verbose, so I’ll use something else and then I
must be doing BDD right”.
There’s a BarCamp in my area soon[1], which will have quite a lot of
Rubyists (not that that’s essential). Maybe there’d be some merit in
offering a “How to diagnose BDD problems from spec problems” session?
If that sounds like something worth doing let me know. Not that
anyone here would attend (apart from Rahoul, maybe, he’s the only
person I know here that is local to me), but I could gather ideas, and
post the slides back later.
Ashley
On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 9:37 AM, Steven B. [email protected]
wrote:
I don’t get upset when people stop using RSpec, but I do get rather upset when people blame it because they mis-used it. The caboose post just seems to justify this kind of behaviour. Notice the first comment, which says:
From Patrick Reagan: “We liked the BDD-style syntax and context, but found that it gave a false sense of security when it came to doing functional testing because the views were completely separated from the controllers under test.”
Patrick completely misses the point. He had bad examples (which are worse than no examples at all) and blames RSpec because he doesn’t understand BDD. This isn’t just BDD, decoupling is one of the benefits realized by the original TDD folks, and he’s saying “No, I want my separate objects to be coupled tightly because it’s less work.” The tight coupling is actually what gives the false sense of security.
-Steven
I agree with your thoughts and sentiments Steven.
–
Zach D.
http://www.continuousthinking.com
Subject: [rspec-users] Caboosers drop RSpec
The subject is wrong too; Caboosers didn’t drop RSpec. Two people
from caboose dropped RSpec. Most of the caboosers I know are still
using RSpec.
Any responses to Parked at Loopia
? How much of this is due to legitimate bugs/problems versus
unfortunate circumstances? Feels kind of worrying that they haven’t
been able to make it work for them.
Big difference between “haven’t been able to” and “wouldn’t learn the
tools”. Ashley’s post below sums it up best. This is a problem
that’s seen regularly when working with new ideas. How many times
have you seen Agile blamed when a project fails due to poor
management? I personally see this all the time.
A poor craftsman blames his tools.
I don’t get upset when people stop using RSpec, but I do get rather
upset when people blame it because they mis-used it. The caboose post
just seems to justify this kind of behaviour. Notice the first
comment, which says:
From Patrick Reagan: “We liked the BDD-style syntax and context, but
found that it gave a false sense of security when it came to doing
functional testing because the views were completely separated from
the controllers under test.”
Patrick completely misses the point. He had bad examples (which are
worse than no examples at all) and blames RSpec because he doesn’t
understand BDD. This isn’t just BDD, decoupling is one of the
benefits realized by the original TDD folks, and he’s saying “No, I
want my separate objects to be coupled tightly because it’s less
work.” The tight coupling is actually what gives the false sense of
security.
-Steven
On 4 Nov 2008, at 14:37, Steven B. wrote:
The subject is wrong too; Caboosers didn’t drop RSpec. Two people
from caboose dropped RSpec. Most of the caboosers I know are still
using RSpec.
Sadly this one has legs and is running wild:
Never let the facts get it the way of a good headline?
Ashley
On 4 Nov 2008, at 15:13, Ashley M. wrote:
Never let the facts get it the way of a good headline?
in even
A poor craftsman blames his tools.
And the poor toolmaker blames the craftsman for being too stupid to
understand how to use his tools.
You say these guys should have come over and posted to this mailing-list
or submitted bugs. But when I read the posts here, most of the time,
when someone has a problem he gets pointed to the unfriendly
documentation pages or worse, the very thin docs available at github.
That doesn’t really motivate people to share their experiences with
RSpec, and when they do, rspec supporters treat them as “whiners”.
On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 8:25 AM, aslak hellesoy
[email protected] wrote:
tracker) before they go out and whine. See my comment in the blog
post.
I completely agree.
–
Zach D.
http://www.continuousthinking.com
On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 4:20 PM, Steven B. [email protected]
wrote:
Never let the facts get it the way of a good headline?
This is typical of rubyflow. I wouldn’t worry about it too much.
It was only a matter of time before the unfortunate political climate
of the Rails community started bleeding into our party.Please don’t let this get in the way of learning and making use of
good practices, people.
exactly. DNFTT
kthxbye
Never let the facts get it the way of a good headline?
This is typical of rubyflow. I wouldn’t worry about it too much.
It was only a matter of time before the unfortunate political climate
of the Rails community started bleeding into our party.
Please don’t let this get in the way of learning and making use of
good practices, people.
-Steven
On 2008-11-04, at 10:32, Fernando P. wrote:
You say these guys should have come over and posted to this mailing-
list
or submitted bugs. But when I read the posts here, most of the time,
when someone has a problem he gets pointed to the unfriendly
documentation pages or worse, the very thin docs available at github.
Hey there Fernando. I read about 80% of the emails on this ML, and
find that most people are incredibly helpful, and devote a lot of
their time to answering other peoples’ questions and problems.
Occasionally a question will be answered concisely with a URL, but
that’s usually when the question has been answered several times
already, and the answer is explained well at the given URL.
I couldn’t be happier with the suggestions, feedback and help that
I’ve received on this ML. You should check out some of the longer
threads to see how dedicated the people here are to helping others.
Cheers,
Nick
On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 12:32 PM, Fernando P. [email protected]
wrote:
A poor craftsman blames his tools.
And the poor toolmaker blames the craftsman for being too stupid to
understand how to use his tools.You say these guys should have come over and posted to this mailing-list
or submitted bugs. But when I read the posts here, most of the time,
when someone has a problem he gets pointed to the unfriendly
documentation pages or worse, the very thin docs available at github.
Oh, your statement is wrong.
There are plenty of threads in this list, and also rspec-devel that
span across 20 or 30 messages to help other users solve RSpec issues
or deal with BDD concepts.
Pat, Ashley, David and Aslak give quite share of their time answering
those emails, do a search and you will find out.
That doesn’t really motivate people to share their experiences with
RSpec, and when they do, rspec supporters treat them as “whiners”.
A whiner can recognize other whiners, I love to whine about things
(and rant about them too), but I first came to the list, ask, and when
noone answers, then I whine.
Given a problem I have with RSpec
And I post to the mailing list
When noone answer my post
And has been N days since I posted
Then I start whining in my blog about it
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from
the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent
disinclination to do so.
Douglas Adams
On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 9:55 AM, Luis L. [email protected]
wrote:
On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 12:32 PM, Fernando P. [email protected] wrote:
But when I read the posts here, most of the time,
when someone has a problem he gets pointed to the unfriendly
documentation pages or worse, the very thin docs available at github.Oh, your statement is wrong.
Not all of it. The list is pretty helpful, sure, but the
documentation could stand for a lot of improvement. I find it very
opaque, too, especially from a “Getting Started” perspective. There
are posts and slideshows scattered all over the blogosphere, but
finding them isn’t straightforward. I know there’s a book coming, but
it ain’t here yet. And the Peepcode videos are good (they’re how I
learned) but to watch all of the RSpec ones is over four hours. Also
nearly forty bucks or an annual subscription.
It’s something I’ve been poking at a bit, though haven’t had the time
yet to bring things together. So I identify myself as part of the
problem too. I could communicate what little I know about RSpec…
But I haven’t yet.
Pat, Ashley, David and Aslak give quite share of their time answering
those emails, do a search and you will find out.
That’s not a replacement for good documentation. You have to have a
certain grounding before you can even figure out where to go and what
questions to ask – and I don’t feel the most visible resources for
that grounding are as good as they could be.
–
Have Fun,
Steve E. ([email protected])
ESCAPE POD - The Science Fiction Podcast Magazine
http://www.escapepod.org
On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 1:09 PM, Stephen E. [email protected] wrote:
documentation could stand for a lot of improvement. I find it very
opaque, too, especially from a “Getting Started” perspective. There
are posts and slideshows scattered all over the blogosphere, but
finding them isn’t straightforward. I know there’s a book coming, but
it ain’t here yet. And the Peepcode videos are good (they’re how I
learned) but to watch all of the RSpec ones is over four hours. Also
nearly forty bucks or an annual subscription.
Neither Rails was the one with best documentation (which btw I wonder
what happened with the caboose documentation project they collected
12K, anyway).
I don’t see any “tutorial” on internet for starting with XP, or either
Scrum, or anything like that… took them years to evolve and be able
to produce a book.
Until then, you have mailing lists and blog posts to share the
knowledge.
It’s something I’ve been poking at a bit, though haven’t had the time
yet to bring things together. So I identify myself as part of the
problem too. I could communicate what little I know about RSpec…
But I haven’t yet.
Welcome aboard, we are share the guilty part.
Pat, Ashley, David and Aslak give quite share of their time answering
those emails, do a search and you will find out.That’s not a replacement for good documentation. You have to have a
certain grounding before you can even figure out where to go and what
questions to ask – and I don’t feel the most visible resources for
that grounding are as good as they could be.
And what ranting and whining provides?
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from
the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent
disinclination to do so.
Douglas Adams
On 4 Nov 2008, at 16:09, Stephen E. wrote:
Pat, Ashley, David and Aslak give quite share of their time answering
those emails, do a search and you will find out.That’s not a replacement for good documentation. You have to have a
certain grounding before you can even figure out where to go and what
questions to ask – and I don’t feel the most visible resources for
that grounding are as good as they could be.
This is a point I’ve made before (and David has rightly pointed me at
the source of the rspec.info website), but I’m now so immersed in
RSpec myself I would find it hard to see the gaps in the
documentation, I think. Plus I’m lazy, and, y’know, busy at work.
I almost wonder whether it would be worth ripping up the rspec.info
site and pointing everyone at the github wiki, then putting some real
effort into making that as good as it can be.
Just a thought.
cheers,
Matt
On 4-nov-2008, at 17:20, Matt W. wrote:
This is a point I’ve made before (and David has rightly pointed me
at the source of the rspec.info website), but I’m now so immersed
in RSpec myself I would find it hard to see the gaps in the
documentation, I think. Plus I’m lazy, and, y’know, busy at work.I almost wonder whether it would be worth ripping up the rspec.info
site and pointing everyone at the github wiki, then putting some
real effort into making that as good as it can be.
That would be a good idea. No more rspec.info and
rspec.rubyforge.net, but just github and The Book. The Book would be
nice… Already have an empty slot reserved on my bookshelf 
cheers,
bartz
On Nov 4, 2008, at 10:24 AM, Luis L. wrote:
Neither Rails was the one with best documentation (which btw I wonder
what happened with the caboose documentation project they collected
12K, anyway).
Tangential to this discussion, but anyhow: some of that money is going
into the Rails Guides hackfest right now. Rails docs can always use
improvement (as can RSpec’s - and I say that as a committed RSpec user
who is still confused too much of the time), but we’re making
progress, I think.
On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 11:45 AM, Bart Z.
[email protected] wrote:
questions to ask – and I don’t feel the most visible resources for
That would be a good idea. No more rspec.info and rspec.rubyforge.net, but
just github and The Book. The Book would be nice… Already have an empty
slot reserved on my bookshelf
Your real bookshelf, or your Shelfari one? 
–
Zach D.
http://www.continuousthinking.com
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