Better Code Through Boring(er) Tests
summary
Tests often become a maintenance nightmare and the fix is concrete: three refactorings that reduce brittleness and duplication. The talk shows replacing testing private methods with small public collaborators or extracted objects (a shim object that later gets refactored away), turning shared module specs into a dedicated class, and moving heavy setup out of tests into constructors or application-level factories rather than into FactoryGirl helpers. Examples use mini test and RSpec idioms and report that these changes make both tests and app code simpler and more stable.
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chapters (14)
- 0:00Start
- 6:14TESTING PRIVATE METHODS - THE PROBLEM
- 7:08TESTING PRIVATE METHODS - ALTERNATIVES
- 7:57TESTING PRIVATE METHODS - EXTRACT SIMPLE CLASS
- 9:01TESTING PRIVATE METHODS - DEFER THE DECISION
- 10:05DUPLICATE TESTS - THE PROBLEM
- 12:05DUPLICATE TESTS - THE SHARED EXAMPLE GROUP SMELL
- 14:40DUPLICATE TESTS - THE KEY IDEA
- 15:23INVENTING THE UNIVERSE - THE PROBLEM
- 17:03INVENTING THE UNIVERSE - THE PREMATURE FIX SMELL
- 18:22INVENTING THE UNIVERSE - SHARED CONTEXT SMELL
- 21:22INVENTING THE UNIVERSE - FACTORY_GIRL SMELL
- 22:36INVENTING THE UNIVERSE - THE PLAIN FACTORY FIX
- 25:56A MAGIC TRICK
