Fixtures on Purpose: From Accident to Artifact

I’ve been writing Rails tests for a long time. I’ve argued about assertion styles and test structure, mocking strategies and naming conventions, and whether def test_ or test "..." is the One True Way. (It’s def test_ . Obviously.) But the thing that changed my testing the most wasn’t any of that. It was realizing that nobody, including me, was designing their test data. Every Test Builds Its Own…