gma/insane-magic.spec

## insane-magic.spec
require 'rspec'

describe 'Rspec' do
  it 'should not allow you to make shit up' do
    [1, 2, 3].should have(4).potatoes
  end
end

## the-lowdown.md

      
    Raw
  

              the-lowdown.md
            
          
    $ rspec ~/insane-magic.spec
F

Failures:

  1) Rspec should not allow you to make shit up
     Failure/Error: [1, 2, 3].should have(4).potatoes
       expected 4 potatoes, got 3
     # /Users/graham/insane-magic.spec:5

Finished in 0.00042 seconds
1 example, 1 failure

Do you see the potatoes method call? Why isn't Ruby complaining that
it doesn't exist? Where the hell did it come from? Is it part of rspec?
It must be, surely. That's the only library I've required!
[Goes off to grep the rspec gems for "potatoes"... doesn't find it]
What's happening here? RSpec is purposefully ignoring .potatoes, which
is a method call on the object returned by #have. And what is that
object, exactly?
So RSpec (and this "BDD" business) is good for people new to testing you
say? Really?
The "call any method you like and we'll silently ignore it" behaviour is
not syntactic sugar, it's pain and confusion for people who are new to
programming. It's a bloody daft idea to put it forward as good practice
in a widely popular library.
Some bad ideas catch on just as easily as good ideas, and this approach
is its own special breed of footgun.
To be clear, I like describe and it. But you can stop there; I feel
RSpec's features have a negative impact on productivity from there on
in.
And for comparison, the Contest gem adds support for these blocks to
test/unit in 100 lines of code.
	require 'rspec'

	describe 'Rspec' do
	it 'should not allow you to make shit up' do
	[1, 2, 3].should have(4).potatoes
	end
	end