6 ms·

I find it quite funny that people cannot tell whether this is a joke or not, just says something about the state of things...

andreasklinger 12y ago
If people don't get it we should maybe just retry it.
- waseem_ 12y ago
  We could fail. Or not.
  - bronson 12y ago
    maybe(joke).will be_success
gavingmiller 12y ago
It does; considering situations where this would be seen as a realistic/novel approach for fixing flapping tests. No need to examine root cause! sigh
rubiquity 12y ago
It does. Especially considering the fact that RSpec itself was created as a joke solution to the "I wish my tests were more human readable" meme several years ago. Hopefully that sheds some light on why some of us might be hyper-sensitive about it.
- srbaker 12y ago
  That's not quite true. I created RSpec (in early 2005) to draw people's attention away from the word "test" because it was a huge hangup while I was teaching TDD. I kept hearing "You can't test something that doesn't exist, therefore your entire idea is bunk." I wanted to introduce TDD to people without ever using the word "test", and then switch them to using xUnit instead. Not a joke, but I guess you could reasonably describe RSpec as a tool for performing a good old fashioned bait and switch. In a classroom. (I never intended for it to be used outside of a classroom setting.) Around the time I was looking for ways to "teach TDD without using the word", Aslak Hellesøy introduced me to Dan North's ideas of Behaviour Driven Development. That's where the word "should" came from. I don't know if it was actually Aslak or Dan (or possibly even Liz Keogh) that first used the word "should", but that wasn't my idea. Also, I'll point out that mixing #should onto Object wasn't my fault. The original syntax looked very close to the expect().to() syntax of today. It was actually assert(foo).does_equal(bar) at one point, and this was the syntax I was most fond of. I tried dozens of different combinations. "#should" was one of many, and I didn't like it. It got released this way because I was talked into it after that variant was demonstrated (by someone else) to a positive audience. People liked it. RSpec took off. Whoops. I later said on twitter, jokingly, that RSpec was a huge troll. That was kind of a joke on a joke. RSpec wasn't a joke, but I didn't build it for actual use. That was a happy accident. That said, it's a great tool these days, if a bit heavy. And it has certainly served my original wish of teaching many people TDD very well. My $0.02 on the "maybe" syntax: if you need this, I suspect your problems are a lot larger than whether or not an assertion will pass or fail. It's symptom solving.
  - rubiquity 12y ago
    Thank you for this. It's nice to have it straight from the horses mouth instead of the many different types of RSpec folklore I've heard about its origin.
  - davidcelis 12y ago
    Author of spec-me-maybe here. My $0.02 cents on the "maybe" syntax would be please don't actually use it.
  - speric 12y ago
    Thanks Steven.
- srbaker 12y ago
  I'd like to thank Jesse Cooke for pointing me at this. The history of RSpec is something that's often misunderstood by many folks.
  - jc00ke 12y ago
    My pleasure ;) I'll go update the wiki. Updated: https://github.com/rspec/rspec/wiki/Background https://github.com/rspec/rspec/wiki/Background

andreasklinger 12y ago

If people don't get it we should maybe just retry it.

waseem_ 12y ago
We could fail. Or not.
- bronson 12y ago
  maybe(joke).will be_success

gavingmiller 12y ago

It does; considering situations where this would be seen as a realistic/novel approach for fixing flapping tests. No need to examine root cause! sigh

rubiquity 12y ago

It does. Especially considering the fact that RSpec itself was created as a joke solution to the "I wish my tests were more human readable" meme several years ago. Hopefully that sheds some light on why some of us might be hyper-sensitive about it.

srbaker 12y ago
That's not quite true. I created RSpec (in early 2005) to draw people's attention away from the word "test" because it was a huge hangup while I was teaching TDD. I kept hearing "You can't test something that doesn't exist, therefore your entire idea is bunk." I wanted to introduce TDD to people without ever using the word "test", and then switch them to using xUnit instead. Not a joke, but I guess you could reasonably describe RSpec as a tool for performing a good old fashioned bait and switch. In a classroom. (I never intended for it to be used outside of a classroom setting.) Around the time I was looking for ways to "teach TDD without using the word", Aslak Hellesøy introduced me to Dan North's ideas of Behaviour Driven Development. That's where the word "should" came from. I don't know if it was actually Aslak or Dan (or possibly even Liz Keogh) that first used the word "should", but that wasn't my idea. Also, I'll point out that mixing #should onto Object wasn't my fault. The original syntax looked very close to the expect().to() syntax of today. It was actually assert(foo).does_equal(bar) at one point, and this was the syntax I was most fond of. I tried dozens of different combinations. "#should" was one of many, and I didn't like it. It got released this way because I was talked into it after that variant was demonstrated (by someone else) to a positive audience. People liked it. RSpec took off. Whoops. I later said on twitter, jokingly, that RSpec was a huge troll. That was kind of a joke on a joke. RSpec wasn't a joke, but I didn't build it for actual use. That was a happy accident. That said, it's a great tool these days, if a bit heavy. And it has certainly served my original wish of teaching many people TDD very well. My $0.02 on the "maybe" syntax: if you need this, I suspect your problems are a lot larger than whether or not an assertion will pass or fail. It's symptom solving.
- rubiquity 12y ago
  Thank you for this. It's nice to have it straight from the horses mouth instead of the many different types of RSpec folklore I've heard about its origin.
- davidcelis 12y ago
  Author of spec-me-maybe here. My $0.02 cents on the "maybe" syntax would be please don't actually use it.
- speric 12y ago
  Thanks Steven.
srbaker 12y ago
I'd like to thank Jesse Cooke for pointing me at this. The history of RSpec is something that's often misunderstood by many folks.
- jc00ke 12y ago
  My pleasure ;) I'll go update the wiki. Updated: https://github.com/rspec/rspec/wiki/Background https://github.com/rspec/rspec/wiki/Background