I am releasing my third book today. This time about Rails-native testing!
Idea
I am a big fan of Rails defaults and especially those for testing. Minitest and fixtures rock! But all I ever see are posts and books on RSpec. Nothing really wrong with RSpec (well, except 2 things), but I am surprised people don’t embrace the simplicity and performance of Rails default testing stack (less dependencies too!).
Originally the idea for the book was more about somebody else writing it. Time passed and nobody did. There is only one related Minitest book I know of and it’s from 2016. That’s Rails 5 with references to Rails 4. We need more Minitest and fixtures. And I want to apply to my next job and write it, so I decided to do a small part in promoting it.
Writing
The writing started with my summer move to Bangkok. You can say I write more abroad than at home and it’s true. I like to pair writing with good life experiences and have a good time. Writing is already difficult, so you need to make it easier. I would hate myself for hiding in the dark closet and write by force.
I finally tried Gordon Ramsay food in Bangkok (I am big fan of his shows), met Dmytro Krasun from ScreenshotOne, seen Muay Thai fights (with 3 knockouts in one evening, no less), and did some relaxing in Pattaya and Ko Larn with jet skiing and go carting.
The original plan was to finish the book during this time, but of course I didn’t. The good news was that it gave me more time to make it better and get a feedback by Steven R. Baker and other readers, so the book is much better for it!
Foreword
Steven R. Baker wrote a foreword to Test Driving Rails. Steven is a testing legend, author of minitest/mock and RSpec. The whole thing happened by accident on X when Steven got interested in my book. To my surprise Steven defaults to Minitest as well. If you want to know something about RSpec beginnings, you should go read his post History of RSpec. Thanks Steven!
Cover
I bought my first car this year, so there is a similar car on the cover (no money for GTI, tho). I was thinking of including one of the DHH’s cars, but wasn’t sure! Maybe in the next edition. Test Driving Rails [applications] meaning is a reference to test driving cars.
Get it
Get Test Driving Rails today with 20% off at launch with code launch.
Get Test Driving Rails and make your tests faster and easier to maintain.
