Panel:


Dave Kimura
Eric Berry
Nathan Hopkins
David Richards


Special Guest: Jason Swett

In this episode of Ruby Rogues, the panel talks with Jason Swett who is a host of the podcast show, Ruby Testing! Jason also teaches Rails testing at CodeWithJason.com. He currently resides in the Michigan area and works for Ben Franklin Labs. Check-out today’s episode where the panelists and the guest discuss testing topics.

Show Topics:

0:00 – Sentry.IO – Advertisement!

Check out the code: DEVCHAT @ Sentry.io.

1:07 – I am David Kimura and here is the panel! Tell us what is going on?

1:38 – Jason: I started my own podcast, and have been doing that for the past few months. That’s one thing. I started a new site with CodeWithJason.com.

2:04 – You released a course?

2:10 – Jason: Total flop and it doesn’t exist, but I am doing something else.

2:24 – I bet you learned a lot by creating the course?

2:34 – Jason: The endeavor of TEACHING it has helped me a lot.

2:50 – Tell us why we should drink the Koolaid?

3:02 – Jason: What IS testing? Good question. Whether is it is manual testing or automated testing. We might was well automate it.

3:25 – If we are testing our code what does that look like?

3:34 – Jason: Not sure what you mean, but I am doing tests at a fine grain vs. coarser grain.

4:00 – Show of hands who has...?

4:19 – What different tests are there?

4:20 – Jason: Good question. One term that one person uses is different to a different person. Let’s start with unit tests vs. integration tests.

Jason dives into the similarities and differences between these 2 tests (see above).

There are different tests, such as: featured tests, acceptance tests, etc.

5:45 – What tests are THE best?

5:50 – Jason: Good question. The kind of tests you are writing depends on what type of coverage you are going for.

If I had a sign-up page for a user, I would...

7:36 – What anti-patterns are you seeing? What is your narrative in teaching people how to use them?

8:07 – Jason talks first about his background and his interaction with one of his colleagues.

8:58 – Question.

9:00 – Jason continues with his answers from 8:07.

9:32 – Jason: Feel free to chime-in. What have you done?

9:42 – I often ignore it until I feel bad and then I say: wait-a-minute I am a professional. Then I realize I ignored the problem because I was acting cowardly.

10:29 – For me it depends on the test that it is.

One gem that I found is: RSpec RETRY.

11:16 – Jason: The test is flapping because of something is wrong with the database or something else. Since you asked about anti-patterns let’s talk about that!

Rails and Angular are mentioned.

13:10 – Do you find that you back off of your unit testing when you are using integration?

13:22 – Jason: It depends on the context we are talking about.

Jason talks about featured testing, model-level testing, and more.

13:58 – What is your view on using MOCKS or FAKES. What should we be doing there?

14:10 – Jason: Going to the Angular world I understand Mocks better than now. There was a parable that I think is applicable here about the young and the old fish.

16:23 – Jason continues talking about testing things in isolation.

16:36 – Question. 

16:39 – I have been looking for an area to specialize in and I wrote an eBook. (Check out here to see the articles and books that Jason has authored.)

Then I was looking around and I wanted to see what people’s issues are with Rails? They have a hard time with testing. I wanted to help them feel competent with it.

18:03 – In your course you have how to choose a framework.

I know Ruby has several options on that front – how do you choose?

18:24 – Jason: There are 2 factors to consider.

Jason tells us what those two factors are.

Jason: Angular, React and Vue.

19:52 – Panelist: I had a conversation with a beginner and we were talking about the different tests. He said the DSL really appealed to him. The surface area of the AI made it approachable for him.

20:27 –