Hey! Stumbled into this thread but just HAVE to respond... Snipping heavily here: On 05/27/2011 11:11 PM, Colin Putney wrote:
without them. It's just *mocks* that are mostly unnecessary.
Amen! I have been thinking the rest of the world had gone mad...
Personally, I find that mocks are *very* useful in a few very specific situations, but they can cause problems it other situations. They're like a very specialized tool - invaluable when you need it, but kept in the bottom of the toolbox and not used very often.
Right. [SNIP of good stuff]
I know that BDD folks like to talk about testing behaviour rather than state, but I don't find the distinction useful. Testing state breaks the encapsulation of the objects under test, and couples the test too closely to their internal implementation. Testing behaviour using mocks *does the same thing*; it just restricts the implementation in a different way.
So refreshingly to see someone that *also* notes that testing using mocks actually break encapsulation. Thank you, thank you... regards, Göran