Jason Swett
codewithjason.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2018
Jason Swett writes about Ruby on Rails, RSpec testing, TDD, code design, and running engineering teams.
What HN saysHN commenters cite it for examples of pointless RSpec tests, Rails integration testing without staging, and a podcast on OOP design in Rails; the author replies to criticism himself.
23HN people shared it
4linked it in comments
49stories submitted
216story points
8 months agolast shared
2018people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1How to Make Your Organization Attractive to Engineering Talent3 people · 17 points · first shared 2019 · 6 comments on HN
- 2Examples of pointless types of RSpec tests3 people · 2 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 3Abstraction in Rails2 people · 20 points · first shared 2022 · 2 comments on HN
- 4How to Defend Good Code2 people · 13 points · first shared 2021 · discussion on HN
- 5Programming principles as memes2 people · 3 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
- 6How to Get Traffic for a Technical Blog2 people · 3 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 7Duplication2 people · 1 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 8When I do TDD and when I don’t1 people · 71 points · first shared 2022 · 109 comments on HN
- 9I wrote a command-line Ruby program to manage EC2 instances for me1 people · 13 points · first shared 2019 · 1 comments on HN
- 10I don’t buy “duplication is cheaper than the wrong abstraction” (2021)1 people · 12 points · first shared 2023 · 24 comments on HN
- 11How to Deploy a Ruby on Rails Application to AWS Elastic Beanstalk1 people · 5 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 12Variable Name Anti-Patterns1 people · 4 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 13Ruby Testing Micro-Course1 people · 3 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 14All Code Eventually Gets Tested, It’s Just a Question of by Whom1 people · 3 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 15What should I NOT write tests for? (2021)1 people · 3 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
jihadjihad · 2026-03-04
Among many other possible examples, here are a few [0] from Ruby that I've seen in the wild before LLMs, and still see today spat out by LLMs.
0: https://www.codewithjason.com/examples-pointless-rspec-tests/
jasonswett · 2023-08-29
> One of the biggest benefits of duplication that the author fails to identify the locality of logic
There are a lot of things in the post that I fail to identify. There are also some things I wrote there that I no longer completely agree with.
Here's a newer post in which I go deeper, and in which I do address the locality of logic.
https://www.codewithjason.com/duplication/
brianzelip · 2022-11-30
Appreciated your conversation here as well, https://www.codewithjason.com/podcast/11693222-164-oop-design-in-rails…
danmaz74 · 2019-11-21
With many "monolithic" frameworks - eg Ruby on rails - you can do end to end automated testing without having to create a staging environment.
https://www.codewithjason.com/rails-integration-tests-rspec-capybara/