Preface to this edition

Thank you for checking out Everyday Rails Testing with RSpec, now updated for Ruby on Rails 8.1. I’ll be honest–as my day job has evolved, I don’t get to write as much Ruby as I once did. But my brain still thinks in Ruby, and Rails is still my go-to for many projects!

Since the previous edition, though, I made the decision to shift the focus of Everyday Rails, the blog that spawned this book back in 2012, to more broadly cover software development. The renamed, rebranded site is Left of the Dev.

Even if I don’t write Ruby on a daily basis these days, it’s still been fascinating to me to see how the Ruby ecosystem–including Rails and RSpec–influence how I believe software development should just work. We Rubyists are spoiled by such wonderful attention to developer experience!

It’s still a great time to be a Rails developer. And if your work is in a different programming language, no worries. RSpec is still the best-in-class testing framework in my opinion, and a great way to learn testing as a practice.

I hope you enjoy this edition of the book. Stay safe out there, and keep writing software for fun, good, and sometimes profit.

Aaron Sumner
Saint Louis, MO, USA
April, 2026