The context here is that Ryan Davis added test order randomization as a default feature to minitest, which was meant to be a mostly-compatible drop-in replacement for the old Test::Unit. Some people complained a lot about this and requested a flag to turn it off. I remember this being hashed out over some time on the ruby-talk mailing list:
I think the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back was that Rails had order-dependent tests at the time. So Ryan added the flag, with his reluctance reflected by the mildly insulting name and doc comment.
https://rubytalk.org/t/minitest-randomization/60387/3
I think the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back was that Rails had order-dependent tests at the time. So Ryan added the flag, with his reluctance reflected by the mildly insulting name and doc comment.