2011/5/31 Göran Krampe <goran@krampe.se>:
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...
Or to rephrase, "documenting the precise nature of the colloboration between an object and its context documents that precise nature." In Colin's example, Set's collaboration with Array is purely an implementation detail and, as he notes, testing the implementation - whether checking that Set stores the value in the array, or what messages Set might send to Array - hurts you. I fail to see how that makes mocks bad. Unless you're railing against hype? In which case, I agree: there ain't no such thing as a free lunch, there is no silver bullet, etc etc. frank