‘Test Driven Development’
Are Mocks All They Are Cracked Up To Be?
Saturday, February 6th, 2010
I noticed the below snippet in Martin Fowler in his article on the subject of Mock based testing (Mocks Aren’t Stubs)
“I’ve always been an old fashioned classic TDDer and thus far I don’t see any reason to change. I don’t see any compelling benefits for mockist TDD, and am concerned about the consequences of coupling tests to implementation.”
It’s interesting for a few reasons. Firstly, it’s unusually assertive for a writer who seems to prefer that the reader make up their own mind rather than lavishing them with his own opinions (although if fairness the paragraphs that follow this excerpt do a little backpedalling). It’s also interesting as the opinion offered is quite different to those of most Thoughtworkers I met during my time there (although I did leave some time ago now).
Anyway, I was asked to talk at a small symposium on Refactoring and Testing so I thought it’s be interesting to go through my own thoughts.
You can find a hard copy of the slides here.
A full dialog can be found at the following links:
Part (1) Why We Need Stubs
Part (2) Why We Need Interaction Testing