Poll: How stable is Velocity since the 0.6 update?

testing
1

It’s been a few weeks since we released Velocity 0.6.x and I’d love to get a gauge of how it’s working for users that have tried the upgrade:

  • :grinning: Solid as a rock
  • :smirk: Much better, there are still a few issues
  • :dizzy_face: I have anxiety using it, but still using it
  • :rage: I gave up after trying 0.6.x
  • :sleeping: I gave up on Velocity, haven’t tried 0.6.x
  • :worried: What’s Velocity?

0 voters

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2

Thank you to all that have voted so far.

I have a message for those that gave up on Velocity before 0.6.x: You should give it another try. Let me explain why with some interesting numbers that I gathered at the time of writing this post, there are:

I have to say I’m quite surprised at the last point.

3

Hey all, conversation between sam and I from Meteor Club Slack. May be useful to put this out there for all to read.

@channel I just shared some interesting numbers about testing frameworks on the poll I recently posted. If you haven’t voted, please do. We (the Velocity team) need the feedback of users.

Poll: How stable is Velocity since the 0.6 update? (edited)

shrop [2:22 PM]
Just read the email… that is pretty insane!

shrop [2:22 PM]
good stuff. like to see testing be so core to meteor dev expectations as it is with the rails community.

samhatoum [2:23 PM]
I would love that. I want to figure out how to encourage that culture

shrop [2:24 PM]
may be good to ask folks in the rails community what made the difference there

shrop [2:24 PM]
my bg is php. php seems to just now be catching on to testing… very late to the game, but glad it is growing there.

samhatoum [2:25 PM]
my understanding is that the author of rails had a very specific and opinionated way of testing, which he pushed

shrop [2:30 PM]
that makes sense. based on that kind of thing, it seems like a few of things will help testing in Meteor.

  1. Having the great work that the Velocity team and your leadership has already done. This allows for many test frameworks to operate with Meteor.
  2. Continue to refine test frameworks down to a few recommended ones. While, it is great that Velocity can allow for many frameworks, it helps to have a focused group of solutions that work together. Allows the community to teach each other and onboard those new to testing.
  3. Having MDG officially recognize Velocity is a great first step. I would like to see MDG take that further by working with you and others on the Velocity team to agree on the recommended frameworks and patterns for testing that we can all use and share. Examples would be blog posts about testing on meteor.com and MDG folks presenting on testing, while allowing you and others on the Velocity team to keep doing what you are doing and leading the testing area.

shrop [2:31 PM]
For example, my teams have landed on cucumber and jasmine (cucumber for end-to-end and jasmine for unit and integration) since they have a lot of momentum. It is going to always be tempting to try other frameworks, but there has to be some commitment there within projects at least.

shrop [2:32 PM]
Our teams spend a ton of time talking about testing and learning… We are not allowing devs to pass code review unless they have some tests in PRs.

shrop [2:32 PM]
That greatly accelerates the learning :simple_smile:

2 Likes
4

@sam I know testing has been great for both @shrop and I equally. It has not only helped find bugs in refactoring/adding to code, but it has helped in development and making sure our code covers a lot more scenarios than without writing tests.

You never know how awesome tests are until you start writing them. It has never really been enough to just talk about how great they are. My suggestion to everyone is to find a method that validates one field and then write a test for every scenario that field could have. You would be surprised how many scenarios you may have missed. :slight_smile:

Thanks for doing what you do, @sam!

1 Like
5

Thanks for the thanks! :slight_smile:

Again I hope that those that gave up should really try 0.6.x based frameworks again. They have really massively improved.

6

Personally, I think it would be really helpful if the Velocity team could somehow agree on a “main” testing framework and make that one more prominent on the homepage. Right now, when you hit the velocity home page it’s hard to understand the best option for testing. All you get is a list of a bunch of different testing packages, it doesn’t present a coherent story.

2 Likes
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That’s a good call @sashko and it’s something I’ve heard from a few people, MDG included.

I think we do need to do something about it, I’ll relay this message back to the team.

8

I have a problem with the documentation provided on upgrading from 0.5.x to 0.8.0. I wish there is better documentation available and echo @sashko comment regarding focusing on a ‘main’ testing approach. Cucumber is awesome and i can see a lot of value. It will be great if official documentation can be cleaned up. I think a lot more people will be able to use it.

Also, BTW, did the letterpress examples upgraded to 0.8.0??

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Hey @sunkay

Thanks for pointing that out, I’ve updated and cleaned up the docs for Meteor cucumber. I’m in the process of updating the book and Letterpress to all use the latest versions since they are more stable.

If you could please start another thread with your issues about Cuke upgrade, I promise to give you one-on-one guidance :wink:

10

@sam I just updated to the latest version and after some initial troubles, I was able to update to the latest. I can say that it is much better performing & stable now than before. Also, some of the improvements are great. Keep up the great work on this.

I would still think having good initial documentation and some examples would help folks adopt this quicker.

It will be great if you can update letterpress to the latest version, since that has some advanced stuff that you are working on.

Thanks

11

@sunkay thank you much for letting me know it’s working much better for you

I’ll be sure to update Letterpress very soon

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Just adding this in case it matters. I see the importance of testing and would love to use Velocity. It might be that it’s related to testing in general, but when I look at the velocity documentation it’s completely overwhelming for me. It’s not possible to get up and running quicly for a testing noob like me :smile: As others have mentioned, I only see the focus on the different packages and their syntax. Which for me at least feels like the least important part.

All the examples I see (and understand) are in such a simple form, that I can’t translate the examples to real world usage. Even though (guessing here) it feels like a lot of common testing scenario’s will be exactly the same across a whole lot of apps, I can’t seem to get a grip on how to do it.

Btw, I did try velocity a couple of weeks back. It must have been 0.6 but am not certain. For what it’s worth, installation and usage was great. Getting the green circle felt great. But after that… no idea what to do next to get anything usefull out of it.

My 0,02.

1 Like
13

A much appreciated response Ben, thank you.

We are in the process of revaming velocity.meteor.com to make it a lot warmer for new comers and this feedback (along with everyone else’s on this thread) is great.

More soon

1 Like