Why testing is central to Ruby culture - See It in Action

Why Testing is Central to Ruby Culture

📖 Scenario: Imagine you are part of a team building a small Ruby program that manages a list of tasks. To make sure your program works well and keeps working as you add new features, you will write tests. Testing is a big part of Ruby culture because it helps catch mistakes early and makes coding more fun and reliable.

🎯 Goal: You will create a simple Ruby class to hold tasks, set up a test configuration, write a test to check your code, and finally run the test to see the result. This will show why testing is important and how it fits naturally in Ruby programming.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a Ruby class called TaskList with an empty array called tasks

Add a configuration variable max_tasks set to 5

Write a method add_task that adds a task only if the list has fewer than max_tasks

Write a test using minitest to check that add_task works correctly

Print the test result to show if the test passed or failed

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Testing is used in real Ruby projects to make sure code works well before sharing with others or adding new features.

💼 Career

Ruby developers often write tests as part of their daily work to keep code quality high and avoid bugs.

1

Create the TaskList class with tasks array

Create a Ruby class called TaskList with an instance variable @tasks initialized as an empty array inside the initialize method.

Ruby

class TaskList
  def initialize
    # Your code here
  end
end

Need a hint?

Use @tasks = [] inside the initialize method to create an empty list.

2

Add max_tasks configuration variable

Inside the TaskList class, add an instance variable @max_tasks set to 5 inside the initialize method.

Ruby

class TaskList
  def initialize
    @tasks = []
    # Your code here
  end
end

Need a hint?

Set @max_tasks = 5 inside the initialize method.

3

Write add_task method with limit check

Add a method add_task to the TaskList class that takes a task parameter and adds it to @tasks only if the number of tasks is less than @max_tasks.

Ruby

class TaskList
  def initialize
    @tasks = []
    @max_tasks = 5
  end

  # Your code here
end

Need a hint?

Use if @tasks.size < @max_tasks to check before adding the task.

4

Write and run a test for add_task method

Write a test using minitest that creates a TaskList object, adds a task, and uses assert_equal to check that the task was added. Then print the test result.

Ruby

require 'minitest/autorun'

# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use assert_equal(['Buy milk'], list.tasks) inside a test_add_task method.