Everyday scripting with Ruby (the book)

Ruby
1

I am curious, has anyone read this? It looks good, and I like the idea
of a tester-
friendly ruby primer, but I would like to know what else it covers.

Like whether it introduces WATIR, Selenium etc.

Learning the language is good, but testers don’t have as much time or
discretion
to learn languages, so return on time investment is important. So I
would hope
that after reading the book they would be in a position to independently
start
doing their own tests.

Normally you can sometimes get a sample chapter or a table of contents,
but
I can’t seem to locate it. So I can’t determine if the focus of the book
is what
I need. (but a Ruby primer for testers, on its own is good).

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Everyday-Scripting-Ruby-Teams-Testers/dp/0977616614/sr=1-1/qid=1170323075/ref=sr_1_1/202-7055669-2259816?ie=UTF8&s=books

Would it be better if I posted this to the WATIR list?

2

On 2/1/07, Richard C. [email protected] wrote:

I am curious, has anyone read this? It looks good, and I like the idea
of a tester-> friendly ruby primer, but I would like to know what else it covers.

http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/bmsft/

Ah d’oh, it would help if I actually read the Prag Prog link instead
of just admiring
the book cover and all fonts greater than 16pt.

Anyway, it doesn’t seem to cover any WATIR, Selenium, Fit or Fitnesse,
but
it is a primer that would help to get people up to speed.

3

On 2/1/07, Richard C. [email protected] wrote:

Anyway, it doesn’t seem to cover any WATIR, Selenium, Fit or Fitnesse, but
it is a primer that would help to get people up to speed.

What about this comment from that link (thanks btw it’s what I was
looking for too):

Marick explains the Ruby language using a series of short, practical
examples. Watir users and other testers who want to learn Ruby will
find it very accessible.
Bret P.
Lead Developer
Watir

4

On 2/1/07, Jason M. [email protected] wrote:

Lead Developer
Watir

Bret is the first guy credited in the acknowledgements. But the book
isn’t a manual on how to use WATIR. Or judging by the Table of Contents,
they couldn’t have spent more than 2 pages talking about it.

WATIR can more or less be learned without knowing Ruby, you can
get stuff done with just the minimal amount of Ruby syntax, arrays,
puts, basic loops and conditionals. But you will hit a wall, or a tester
would have to call in a programmer, when you need to do things like
tie all your tests together, generate a test report etc.

Much like Rails, people can get a lot done without knowing Ruby, and
just knowing the Rails syntax subset. For that community they got
the Ruby for Rails book to get them onto Ruby enlightenment. I think
this book could accomplish the same thing for testers.

I really really liked the first tutorial example: How to test if an
uninstaller
actually did its job right and cleaned up everything. If you adapt that
example
for your own products, and never open the book again, that book has paid
for itself the first time you run that test.

Eagerly looking forward to it.

5

On 2/1/07, Richard C. [email protected] wrote:

Bret P.
Lead Developer
Watir

Bret is the first guy credited in the acknowledgements. But the book
isn’t a manual on how to use WATIR. Or judging by the Table of Contents,
they couldn’t have spent more than 2 pages talking about it.

Actually, perhaps I should talk to Bret about it on the WATIR list …

6

On Feb 1, 3:59 am, “Richard C.” [email protected] wrote:

I am curious, has anyone read this? It looks good, and I like the idea
of a tester-
friendly ruby primer, but I would like to know what else it covers.

Like whether it introduces WATIR, Selenium etc.

No it does not discuss these tools (nor Fit). It does, however, have a
detailed explanation of Test::Unit in a context that testers will
probably appreciate.

Learning the language is good, but testers don’t have as much time or discretion
to learn languages, so return on time investment is important. So I would hope
that after reading the book they would be in a position to independently start
doing their own tests.

I would say that it is more of a Ruby language manual for testers than
a primer on how to use Ruby for testing. Testers who have been
learning Watir and have been wanting a book that will help them with
Ruby are likely to like this book.

I have found that testers usually prefer concrete, realistic examples
over abstract concepts or fanciful examples. Although many of the Ruby
programming examples in the book may not quite count as “testing” to
many testers, they will be close enough, that if they already know
Watir, they will be able to see how to put it all together pretty
quickly.

Would it be better if I posted this to the WATIR list?

You comments would also be welcome there. Many Watir users don’t read
this list. We get a lot of general Ruby questions on the list. As you
surely know, Watir really isn’t a testing tool, but rather a library
for driving a browser. Most testers find that they need to build a
larger testing framework, but don’t know enough Ruby to know how to
really do this. These people should be reading Everyday Scripting.

I just got my copy of the published version yesterday, although I had
read the galley’s previously. I’m planning to write up a longer review
this weekend.

Bret

7

Brian M. wrote:

programming examples in the book may not quite count as “testing” to

should because they don’t know about ideas like refactoring, unit

I have the book – it’s great!!

–
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky, FBG, AB, PTA, PGS, MS, MNLP, NST, ACMC(P)
http://borasky-research.blogspot.com/

If God had meant for carrots to be eaten cooked, He would have given
rabbits fire.

8

Richard C. wrote:

I really really liked the first tutorial example: How to test if an
uninstaller
actually did its job right and cleaned up everything. If you adapt
that example
for your own products, and never open the book again, that book has paid
for itself the first time you run that test.
Sadly, it will not work for the uninstaller that comes with the Ruby
One-Click Installer.

–
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky, FBG, AB, PTA, PGS, MS, MNLP, NST, ACMC(P)
http://borasky-research.blogspot.com/

If God had meant for carrots to be eaten cooked, He would have given
rabbits fire.

9

On Feb 1, 2007, at 8:10 AM, Bret P. wrote:

quickly.
Bret is right about this. A bit more:

  • Back when the title was Scripting for Testers, I decided to use
    examples other than automating test execution. Too often, testers
    focus only on test automation when they have lots of other tasks they
    could automate for quick wins.

  • Partly because of that, some reviewers commented that the original
    title was too narrow. Other people could get use out of the book. So
    we changed the title.

  • “[Part 3 is] mainly about teaching you how to write scripts in a
    steady, controlled way. All programmers know the feeling of hitting
    that wall where they can’t make any change without breaking
    something. I want to show you how to push that wall further away.”

My experience has been that testers hit that wall way sooner than
they should because they don’t know about ideas like refactoring,
unit testing, and intention-revealing code, so I aimed to help with
that.

  • I wanted to emphasize scripts that live in a larger world, so I’ve
    tried to help readers find and make use of other people’s work, and
    to make their own work easy for others to install.

Brian M., independent consultant
Mostly on agile methods with a testing slant
www.exampler.com, www.testing.com/cgi-bin/blog