RSpec new expectation: finally not shoving a verb into a noun

I recently saw a note describing how Ruby’s RSpec will soon deprecate should in favor of the “new expectation syntax” expect.

I sighed. should was a terrible mistake in the first place.

Calling this a change in syntax is misleading. It’s the semantics that matters, and it’s the obsessive desire to play with syntax in the first place that led to the original should monkey-patching nightmare.

In the terminology of Steve Yegge’s famous rant about the kingdom of nouns: there was no good reason to shove the verb should into a class definition (noun).

An expectation of something shouldn’t be monkey-patched into an object.

The expectation is external, not internal, not something to be owned by a class. The new RSpec finally recognizes this.