In this short, I reflect on Ryan R. Hughes’ article, “14 Minutes → 4 Seconds: A Tale of Switching from RSpec to Minitest.”

After already optimizing their RSpec test suite down to 14 minutes, his team gradually migrated to Minitest and fixtures — removed FactoryBot — and ended up at 4 seconds. Same tests. Larger codebase. Smaller test surface.

This isn’t about “RSpec vs Minitest.” It’s about abstraction cost, complexity creep, and when Rails defaults might actually be the faster long-term choice.

Full credit to Ryan for publishing real numbers instead of opinions.

If you’re building or maintaining a Rails app and your test suite feels heavier every year, this conversation might be worth having.

See Ryan’s article here: https://x.com/ryanrhughes/status/2019258699001294911?s=20

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