First Experiences with BDD, Cucumber, And RSpec

I've restarted the project I have been working on. The prototype code worked well enough but I don't think the code is in good shape. I didn't add any testing to the prototype and this started to cause significant problems.

I don't know when or where I first heard about RSpec or behavior-driven development. However, when I found out that a book on RSpec, the aptly titled The RSpec Book, was being published, I pre-ordered it. I have been reading the beta PDF and decided to apply it to the rewrite.

Like any new programming methodology, it takes a little bit of getting used to. It took me a few hours last night to implement a single action on a controller but I'm certain this will improve over time. (I find also that switching between the PDF and TextMate on my laptop costs time too. This is definitely a time for which having a second monitor would be useful.)

I find BDD interesting because it forces a different way of programming than I'm used to. I spend a lot of time working on the model and seem to get around to the controllers and views near the end (if ever). Instead, when writing the feature for cucumber, I have to establish what behavior should occur for the user and then make sure that the controller and view gets written for that behavior. I obviously lack the experience to make an informed decision on whether or not BDD is a better software development methodology than TDD or other testing-enhanced processes. (Any process that involves testing is, in my opinion, significantly better than any that does not.)

One omission I found in the book (or maybe I haven't looked in the right place) is that there seems to be no discussion about spec'ing routes. RSpec does have methods for it. In discussion on the rspec-users mailing list, David Chelimsky provided a link to some examples so some documentation does exist. (I've left a note in the book errata so we'll see what happens.)

An issue I found working with RSpec is that ruby script/spec spec/ works but rake rspec does not. This seems to be because the rake task is not Rails-aware while script/spec is. I haven't done much more research into it though. Since the first command works, I'll continue to use it.