(duplicating another comment I wrote to hear your thoughts)
The fundamental design problem for rspec is for each test you create db state (tons of writes), run the test (reads and writes), and then tear-down (truncate). Each test is at least adding an authorized user (and then removing it) at the simplest and at the worst creating complicated db state to support relational models that must be added and torn down with each test (database_cleaner).
Gems like Fabricator or FactoryBot also make the "create db state" even more excessive, because developers would be lazy and use factory methods that create more than they actually need for the test.
I don't exactly agree that it's a design problem. I think there is a lot of value in testing at a high level (controller tests) and having them touch the full stack (down to the DB). Gives a lot of confidence that the code will work in production. Throwing money at it (running the tests in parallel) pretty much solves it.
I have seen FactoryBot use get out of control (creating 8x as many records as you'd expect). That's a really easy way to slow down a test suite :). One way I've found to fix that is by adding tests for the factories, and asserting they are only creating what you want them to.
On model tests, another thing GitHub did well was encourage using `.build` when possible to avoid writing the the DB.
> I think there is a lot of value in testing at a high level (controller tests) and having them touch the full stack (down to the DB).
There is a lot of wasted work. Each (similar) test would insert and then delete the same rows, but make a little tweak.
Other languages and frameworks (java, python or golang) don't need to test the db and run super quick. Most db systems do not actually need to be tested. e2e testing can be done manually via curl or qa.
> Throwing money at it (running the tests in parallel) pretty much solves it.
Tests still are slow locally.
> One way I've found to fix that is by adding tests for the factories
That is interesting. I had a meta-test that would limit the number of sql queries a test could trigger.
The fundamental design problem for rspec is for each test you create db state (tons of writes), run the test (reads and writes), and then tear-down (truncate). Each test is at least adding an authorized user (and then removing it) at the simplest and at the worst creating complicated db state to support relational models that must be added and torn down with each test (database_cleaner).
Gems like Fabricator or FactoryBot also make the "create db state" even more excessive, because developers would be lazy and use factory methods that create more than they actually need for the test.