Simon Bagreev gave a presentation on testing and software development. He argued that unit testing provides a false sense of confidence and does not adequately test interactions between objects. He advocated focusing on acceptance criteria and system/integration tests over unit tests. Bagreev also presented tools like rspec-rotten and rspec-visual for identifying unused tests and performing visual regression testing of user interfaces. The talk concluded by emphasizing the importance of testing what matters to users and adopting a "thought-driven development" approach over excessive unit testing.

1. RAILSCLUB 2015
Testing
and Software Writer a year later
Simon Bagreev
Head of Ruby development
Rambler&Co

2. RAILSCLUB 2015
whoami
status_200
semmin
Simon Bagreev

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US

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RailsConf 2014

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TDD
● doesn’t test anything
● complicates design
● holy trinity (speed, coverage, ratio)
● adds cost, not value

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Software Writer
● does the whole thing work?
● testing at the higher level (system tests)
● adequate testing

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More problems
● no testing
● false confidence
● holy wars
● ignored failing tests
● endless test suite (due to units)
● “virtual” QA department

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No testing
● no proof that features
work
● no way to catch
regressions
● impossible to maintain

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No testing - TODO
● start with user stories
● write acceptance specs
● move to system tests
● create “visual” tests

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False confidence
● many (unit) tests
● runs fast
● 100% coverage

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About testing
“Testing shows the presence, not the
absence of bugs.”
Edsger W. Dijkstra
NATO Software Engineering Conference, 1969

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Value of unit testing
“Most software failures come from the interactions between
objects rather than being a property of an object or method in
isolation.”
“ Functional testing typically finds twice as many bugs as unit
testing ”
James Coplien
Why Most Unit Testing is Waste

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Coverage
class Event
def initialize(started_at)
@started_at = started_at
end
def today?
(Time.now.beginning_of_day..Time.now.end_of_day).cover? @started_at
end
end

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100% coverage
RSpec.describe Event do
subject { Event.new(start_time) }
context 'today' do
let(:start_time) { Time.now }
it 'todays event' do
expect(subject).to be_today
end
end
end

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100% coverage
no expectation
RSpec.describe Event do
subject { Event.new(start_time) }
context 'today' do
let(:start_time) { Time.now }
it 'todays event' do
subject.today?
end
end
end

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● mutation testing
● higher level testing
● “Create system tests with
good feature coverage
(not code coverage)”
James Coplien
Why Most Unit Testing is Waste
False confidence TODO

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Holy wars
● RSpec vs MiniTest
● Capybara vs Cucumber
● AR fixtures vs FactoryGirl
● stubs vs mocks
● PhantomJS vs Selenium
● etc...

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Ignored failures
“Oh, you have to invoke
Maven with this flag that
turns off those tests — they
are tests that no longer
work!”
James Coplien
Why Most Unit Testing is Waste

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“Rotten” tests
“If you want to reduce your test mass, the number
one thing you should do is look at the tests that have
never failed in a year and consider throwing them
away.”
James Coplien
Why Most Unit Testing is Waste

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rspec-rotten, FTW
“rotten” – haven’t changed status (failed/passed /pending)
in extended period of time
https://github.com/rambler-digital-solutions/rspec-rotten

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rspec-rotten
● uses custom rspec formatter
● subscribes to rspec notifications
● after every test run saves stats into json file:
{
"id": "./spec/controllers/calendar_controller_spec.rb[1:1:1]",
"state": "failed",
"date": "2015-09-21T22:04:39.063+03:00",
"location": "./spec/controllers/calendar_controller_spec.rb:13",
"description": "render the :show template"
}

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rspec-rotten
Notifies you about “rotten” tests:

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Endless unit tests
Weinberg’s Law of Decomposition

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Endless unit tests
Acceptance test

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Endless unit tests
Unit testing

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Endless unit tests
(Testing) is identifying and resolving problems that arise in
the system as a whole rather than in individual
components. Testing is done by groups, as an individual
programmer lacks the total knowledge needed to test
large sections of the system. The emphasis in testing
should never be on individual modules.
Edsger W. Dijkstra
NATO Software Conference, 1969

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Additionally
● hard to maintain (tests are code too, may contain
bugs)
● hard to change (tends to become “binary”)
● may never occur in prod

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Many unit tests TODO
● mutation testing
● rspec-rotten
● “Software Writer’s” approach: “If this test fails,
what business requirement is compromised?”

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“Virtual” QA dept
“My unit tests pass, QA / PM / Product Owner will
take care of the rest” ... Nope
another team

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“Virtual” QA TODO
● focus on acceptance specs (outside-in)
● “visual” tests for end-user regressions

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rspec-visual, FTW
"visual" testing with rspec via screenshot comparison
https://github.com/rambler-digital-solutions/rspec-visual

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rspec-visual step 1
# spec/features/visual/home_page_spec.rb
describe 'home page', type: :feature, visual: true do
it 'home_page' do |example|
visit '/'
take_screenshot(page, example)
should look_like example.description
end
end
Create “visual” test

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rspec-visual step 2
# spec/features/visual/home_page_spec.rb
describe 'home page', type: :feature, visual: true do
it 'home_page' do |example|
visit '/'
take_screenshot(page, example)
should look_like example.description
end
end
Take a screenshot

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rspec-visual step 3
# spec/features/visual/home_page_spec.rb
describe 'home page', type: :feature, visual: true do
it 'home_page' do |example|
visit '/'
take_screenshot(page, example)
should look_like example.description
end
end
Use look_like matcher to compare with “stable”

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rspec-visual step 3
# rspec/visual/.../look_like_matcher.rb
RSpec::Matchers.define :look_like do |expected|
# ... set file paths
match do |actual|
# ... copy to stable folder if not found
system "compare -metric PAE -subimage-search -dissimilarity-threshold 1
#{expected_image_file_path} #{actual_image_file_path} #{diff_file_path}"
end
# ... customize failure message
end
look_like matcher

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rspec-visual result
!=

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rspec-visual diff

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rspec-visual result
!=

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rspec-visual diff

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rspec-visual gotchas
● dependencies (Capybara, Poltergeist + PhantomJS,
imagemagick)
● only supports Poltergeist
● dynamic data
● speed

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To conclude
As a Software Writer:
● focus on what really matters
● throw away tests that have no business
value
● do “visual” testing
● use Thought-Driven Development

42. RAILSCLUB 2015
Contacts
В группе компаний Rambler&Co всегда есть открытые вакансии для тех, кто
хочет профессионально расти и развиваться, занимаясь тем, что по-
настоящему нравится
hr@rambler-co.ru
www.rambler-co.ru/jobs

43. RAILSCLUB 2015
Links
RailsConf 2014 Keynote: Writing Software by DHH: http://bit.ly/1LwrENX
Why Most Unit Testing is Waste, James Coplien: http://bit.ly/1kBMor1
Why Most Unit Testing is Waste part 2, James Coplien: http://bit.ly/1OuzrOc
NATO Software Engineering Conference 1969: http://bit.ly/1iwANKT
rspec-visual: https://github.com/rambler-digital-solutions/rspec-visual
rspec-rotten: https://github.com/rambler-digital-solutions/rspec-rotten

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Thanks
Questions?