On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 11:40 PM, Stephen Eley <sfe...@gmail.com> wrote:
<deliberately_out_of_context_to_make_a_point> > If your spec breaks because you changed a method call, you're not > testing behavior any more. You're testing syntax. </deliberately_out_of_context_to_make_a_point> We've got to stop making laws out of guidelines. This is a very general statement about what is really a very specific situation, and it is not in any way as black and white as this statement sounds. But *somebody* is going to read this, not understand the context, and think it's international law. Code examples are clients of the subject code, just like any other clients that are part of the subject code. You don't expect all of the other objects in your app to work correctly when you change a method name in only one place, do you? You need to change all the clients, including the code examples. In Chicago we don't have any j-walking laws (at least that I know of - I've yet to be arrested for it). The guideline we operate under is that you should wait for the light, but we don't always follow that guideline. When I'm at an intersection and don't have the light, I look both ways, like I learned back in kindergarten, and cross if its safe. If there are no cars coming, I'm very likely to survive the incident. If there are cars coming, I can still navigate my way across the street and, if I do so carefully, correctly, and with precise timing, I might well survive. Guidelines are great tools, but if we followed guidelines like laws we'd never get where we're going. FWIW, David _______________________________________________ rspec-users mailing list rspec-users@rubyforge.org http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rspec-users
