Dazed and confused with cucumbers
This week, I have decided to learn Ruby as a new programming language. I decided that since I am mainly a web developer, I should set up Ruby on Rails and go that route. For those that do not know, Ruby is the general language, and Rails is the web framework for Ruby. I found the install of both Ruby and Rails very straightforward and simple. Once I had both installed on my machine, I decided to checkout what Tekpub had in terms of learning Ruby on Rails. Tekpub is a website aimed at developers with video tutorials on various technologies (Ruby on Rails, ASP.NET MVC, jQuery, etc.). I started watching the first of a series showing Ruby on Rails. I was following the instructor (Rob Conery), and when he got to the section of installing a testing gem (kind of like a package in Java, or assembly in .Net) called Cucumber, I got messed up. It was working for him, but not me! I was like “What the frak!” Well it turns out all the way in the last video in the series, he goes and says that people have mentioned that the steps in the first video (the one I was at) did not work for them. He then goes and shows what he should have done, and yada yada yada. Well, in the end I got Cucumber to install correctly on my machine.
Once I got it installed correctly, I started playing a bit with Cucumber. It seems very interesting. Cucumber follows the concept of Behavior Driven Development. As it says in its website: “Cucumber lets software development teams describe how software should behave in plain text. The text is written in a business-readable domain-specific language and serves as documentation, automated tests, and development-aid – all rolled into one format”. I haven’t gotten too far into it, but once I do, I am sure I will share more about it.
