Subtitle: Build Ruby Apps with Confidence
Recommended to me by: a coworker who started a book group about it
RSpec is an automated testing framework for Ruby and Rails programs. It covers both unit tests (fast, narrowly scoped) and feature tests (slower, broadly scoped).
A small group of coworkers met every two weeks via video chat and discussed one chapter at a time. We reviewed the chapter topics and discussed how they apply to the large application we work on. I did most of the exercises and outside reading because I learn better that way.
The book starts with an extended, detailed example that covers most of the topics in the book, and then those topics are covered again chapter by chapter. It reads as if the example was originally at the end, and then they decided to move it to the beginning and then duplicate a lot of material to make it understandable.
That caveat aside, the book is clear, understandable, and very useful when working with RSpec. It covers details of configuration, command line arguments like –only-failures (only run the tests that failed on the previous run), and suggestions for how to structure tests to be reliable, readable, and maintainable.
Recommended for anyone who writes or maintains RSpec tests or who would like to start using RSpec for Rails or Ruby code.
