A Taste of the Future
Posted by Adam Wiggins on March 18, 2008 at 05:26 PM
Yesterday I had a chance to tinker around with a new project using Merb, DataMapper, RSpec, and Thin. Merb + Thin means your app serves up pages twice as fast, with half the memory. Merb + DataMapper means your app is threadsafe. RSpec + DataMapper means your tests are completely independent of the database - which means no db:test:prepare step, so the tests run lightning fast and without fragile database dependencies.
Above all, these components are all cleaner, smaller, and more specialized than their mainstream counterparts (Rails, ActiveRecord, Test::Unit, and Mongrel). It's too early for me to make any kind of real judgement about these tools (except for RSpec, which is very mature and entirely suitable for production use.) But using these four tools in a stack together leaves me with the gut sense that this is where the future lies.
Comments
There are 2 comments on this post. Post yours →
I love the idea of RSpec, but to me its become far too bloated. When there are problems, they are next to impossible to figure out due to the complexity of the code. It just doesn't seem like it should be as complex as it is for what it does.. or rather what I use it for day to day.
Those other projects are a break-away from the "popular" approaches. Hopefully soon we'll see a break-away from RSpec, or maybe an even a better approach from those projects themselves.
I couldn't agree with you more on the Merb + DataMapper + Thin (or Ebb or whatever) recipe.
I've been using Rspec for awhile now and have to admit I'm on the fence. Obviously far superior to Test::Unit for most things but feels awfully clunky to me in a lot of situations (controller specs, cough). Going to be toying with Shoulda soon. Add Mocha, stir, bake at 400 ftw?
Post a comment
Required fields in bold.