I try to thing of the audience for the work, and it keeps me sane.
Stories are to make sure you're holding up your contract with the
client or user. They are high level, and don't deal with any
implementation details that can be abstracted away. You might relate
them to acceptance tests, because when you pass stories, you're
passing all the acceptance criteria. You also might compare them
integration tests, because they should ensure everything behind the
UI (or API) works correctly. It's reasonable to mock external
services, but I try to have these be as real as possible.
If you and your user disagree about how something works, you make the
change in the story. Then you change the specs and code as needed.
Specs are to make sure you're holding up your contract with the code
and its developers. With so little static checking in ruby, specs are
your type checking, exception checking (ala java), the preconditions,
postconditions, and invariants (ala DbC), published interface,
performance profiler, and possibly even internal documentation. These
make sure you know the right way to interact with the code. And of
course you should specify the code before you implement it, red-green
style.
If you and a developer disagree about how something works, you make
the change in the specs. Then you change the code as needed.
Clear as mud?
On 02008:02:18, at 5:44CST, David Chelimsky wrote:
On Feb 18, 2008 6:38 PM, Victor Asteinza <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Isn't there redundancy between what is in your stories and your
specs?
Or are your stories at a higher level and the specs are at a lower
level? That would make more sense to me. There would be some cross
over. but the specs expand on what is in the stories....
While either tool can technically support either mode of thinking:
Stories are aimed at describing the behaviour of your applications.
Specs are aimed at describing the behaviour of the objects in your
applications.
You are correct that there will likely be some cross over, but keep in
mind that there are different audiences and different processes.
The steps in stories (the descriptive text, not the implementation of
the steps) are typically written in entirety before setting out to
develop a body of work. Stories should be run before a commit, or as
part of a CI build, but are not always run between every step.
The examples in specs, on the other hand, typically come into
existence in a very granular red-green-refactor cycle, and should be
run between every step.
HTH,
David
Message: 3
Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2008 11:21:47 -0500
From: "Andrew WC Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [rspec-users] Specs versus Stories
To: rspec-users <rspec-users@rubyforge.org>
Message-ID:
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
My workflow is the following:
Stories->Spec Views->Spec Controllers-Spec Models
I'll write a few stories of what I think should it happen.
Then I'll write my specs of what should show (and also do some
static html
page mockups)
Then I'll spec my controllers and models
I'll go back to my stories to see if they need adjusting because my
perceptive of how the app changed
Then I run my stories and make them pass.
Then I write a few stories and repeat.
I constantly step move back and forth.
I think Stories and BDD greatly assists you to shape your idea.
Write stories for what you can think of and then move on to specing.
You don't need complete stories you can also go back and fill them
in later.
On Feb 18, 2008 2:57 AM, Victor Asteinza <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I am new to BDD and have been doing some reading and playing with
rSpec. I am a little confused. I am not sure what the best
practice
for using stories and specs. Should I be writing stories first,
then
specs that would fulfill those stories, and then write the
implementation code to have everything pass? At first that seems a
little redundant.
I understand that the stories let you write the behavior in plane
English, which I can see it being useful when dealing with non
technical users. But if I am developing an internal app I am
struggling with whether I should develop the stories first and then
move on to the specs.
Opinions? Experiences?
Thanks,
Victor
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