Yeah, I was definitely being a little whiny there. I did just pick up an RSpec book -- just wish TDD experience wasn't such a pre-req for getting a Ruby job.

See, I'm actually the other way, I'm really glad that testing is such a huge part of Ruby's culture. In a language that gives you so much freedom, you need something to make sure you're not doing terrible things.

Also, writing tests is a skill. After knowing how, you still can actually get better at writing tests. It's not as easy as 'just teach me RSpec,' it's more like 'teach me functional programming' or something. It's much bigger than just switching languages.

I agree that it's important for the community as a whole. But for a junior position, isn't the key that the person can write working Ruby, can get along with the team, and has growth potential? Would you hire someone who had been a hobbyist, produced some cool, working web apps, but happened to not have written a single test for them?

Totally. But knowing how to test puts you at a competitive advantage; if you had two applicants and one knew how to test already, wouldn't you hire that one?

I've been working on my own to learn Ruby, and I know TDD is a big part of things. Have you used the Peepcode screencast? Would that be a good starting point on RSpec?

railstutorial.org is a great place to learn the Rails/Rspec/github/heroku way of development and deployment.

Yep I've worked through the first couple chapters of Rails tutorial and launched my first rails app. I'd just like to learn more specifically about RSpec.