On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 7:05 PM, Pat Maddox <mailingli...@patmaddox.com>wrote:
> Cucumber features are the best tool I know of for capturing requirements > from my customer. RSpec specs are the best tool I know of for communicating > intent and gauging code quality among the developer team. > > I'm not sure how exactly you're quantifying a 90/10 or 80/20 split. I > would expect that there would be a lot of overlap in coverage. That is, any > given line of code is likely to have some cucumber and some rspec coverage. > Personally I shoot for 100% RSpec coverage, and Cucumber is based entirely > on what my customer wants. If we discuss a new feature or bug fix and they > feel I know exactly what they're talking about and don't need a cucumber > test for it, I don't write the cucumber test. Cukes are for teasing out > requirements, which is most important when there's domain complexity that I > don't understand, because I'm a programmer and not a domain expert. Every > line of code I write gets RSpec coverage. That's how I personally feel > confident that my code does what I think it does, and also helps me keep my > dependencies under control. > > It's true that you can change out all the underlying code and cucumber > tests still pass. But you should be able to change out a lot of code and > have your specs still pass, as well. If you're changing the API then some > specs might no longer be valid, or need to be moved, or whatever. That's > just a part of refactoring. Although to be honest I think focused specs > help me refactor more than other people, because I take really small steps > when I refactor. When most people "refactor" they tear out a bunch of shit > and see if it still works. > > Cucumber tests tend to take longer because they're written at a much higher > level. That requires more setup, and more steps through the codebase. For > that reason, Cucumber isn't particularly good at giving me rapid feedback. > I want feedback in 10 seconds rather than 10 minutes. > > The best mantra I have for using Cucumber & RSpec in harmony is, "RSpec > lets me know my code works right, Cucumber lets me know my code is doing the > right work." > +1 -- Zach Dennis http://www.continuousthinking.com (personal) http://www.mutuallyhuman.com (hire me) http://ideafoundry.info/behavior-driven-development (first rate BDD training) @zachdennis (twitter)
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