Background

RSpec was written by Steven Baker in 2005.

I created RSpec (in early 2005) to draw people's attention away from the word "test" because it was a huge hangup while I was teaching TDD. I kept hearing "You can't test something that doesn't exist, therefore your entire idea is bunk." I wanted to introduce TDD to people without ever using the word "test", and then switch them to using xUnit instead.

Not a joke, but I guess you could reasonably describe RSpec as a tool for performing a good old fashioned bait and switch. In a classroom. (I never intended for it to be used outside of a classroom setting.)

Around the time I was looking for ways to "teach TDD without using the word", Aslak Hellesøy introduced me to Dan North's ideas of Behaviour Driven Development. That's where the word "should" came from. I don't know if it was actually Aslak or Dan (or possibly even Liz Keogh) that first used the word "should", but that wasn't my idea.

Also, I'll point out that mixing #should onto Object wasn't my fault. The original syntax looked very close to the expect().to() syntax of today. It was actually assert(foo).does_equal(bar) at one point, and this was the syntax I was most fond of. I tried dozens of different combinations. "#should" was one of many, and I didn't like it. It got released this way because I was talked into it after that variant was demonstrated (by someone else) to a positive audience.

People liked it. RSpec took off. Whoops.

I later said on twitter, jokingly, that RSpec was a huge troll. That was kind of a joke on a joke. RSpec wasn't a joke, but I didn't build it for actual use. That was a happy accident. That said, it's a great tool these days, if a bit heavy. And it has certainly served my original wish of teaching many people TDD very well.

— Steven Baker, via Hacker News