[LRUG] Details for your cuketober meeting

[Tom Stuart]

On 8 Oct 2010, at 11:21, James Adam wrote:
> Personally, I'd love to talk about whether or not Cucumber buys you
> anything over using code, and people's approach to testing in general,
> but this kind of discussion can easily descending into loggerheaded
> frustration and meaningless froth.

There are two kinds of people: those who've used Cucumber in anger, and those who've just dabbled or not used it at all.

The first group subdivides into those who enjoyed the experience and those who didn't. Based on the many related conversations I've overheard or participated in, it seems increasingly clear that this subdivision comes down to a matter of taste: either you find the level of abstraction ultimately beneficial or you don't. All of the satellite issues around maintainability etc are an expression of whether you think the amount of effort involved justifies the payoff.

So these days I don't find the "I've used Cucumber and love it and you're an idiot" vs "I've used Cucumber and hate it and YOU'RE an idiot" back-and-forth very useful. Everyone knows that Cucumber introduces extra hassle; everyone disagrees about whether it's worth it. Maybe it's possible to gather empirical data on that question but it's hard to account for factors like programmer satisfaction in your metrics. When you pop open the world's best-written .feature file does it make you feel happy or nauseous? It would save time if more people would admit that that's what they're really arguing about, and furthermore that it's a fundamentally unwinnable argument about subjective reality rather than an empirical question that must be decided once and for all in a steel cage.

I'm interested in any discussion which manages to sidestep that unwinnable argument, either by presenting subjectively more palatable alternatives (e.g. Steak) so that everyone can choose something that they're personally happy with, or by attempting to move the break-even point by presenting techniques & tools (e.g. Joseph Wilk's maligned "Cucumber Patterns" post) that reduce the hassle of doing the thing that you've already decided you want to do, or by some other means which doesn't involve punching. I don't expect such a discussion would change the opinion of anyone in the first group but it'd likely a) be genuinely educational for all concerned and b) help people in the second group to divine where they're likely to stand on the underlying question of taste.

Cheers,
-Tom