How to Develop an RSpec Test Suite You'll Love

Talk Summary

How to Develop an RSpec Test Suite You'll Love

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Have you experienced any of these symptoms in your test suite?

• The test suite is slow
• Tests break easily
• Tests require too much setup
• Tests are hard to change
• Tests are hard to write
• Tests fail intermittently
• No one fixes broken tests quickly

These symptoms can lead developers to neglect their tests. Sometimes people stop running the test suite altogether. Even if they don't, tests like this can cost more than they are worth.

Michael Stalker will talk about how to write RSpec unit tests that are fast and maintainable. He will discuss how to write isolated, focused tests; when to use mocks and stubs; how to eliminate non-determinism; how to test Ruby modules, and how to identify code smells in your tests. The goal is growing a test suite that assists the development process instead of getting in the way. Tests like that can be a joy to work with.

Even if you use a different unit testing tool, many of the principles from this talk will help you improve your test suite, as well.

Speaker Bio: Michael Stalker

Michael has been using Ruby since 2009, and has been working with RSpec since 2011. He currently works for RentPath.