

On Mocks and Mockist Testing - mrgray
http://jamesgolick.com/2010/3/10/on-mocks-and-mockist-testing.html

======
MartinCron
It's nice to see an article about developer-centric test automation that's
isn't obvious trolling.

The distinction he makes between statist and mockist tests is an important one
(although I tend to use the terms "state-based" and "interaction-based" when I
make that distinction myself). Knowing what your strategy is for confirming
that the code under test actually works is too often overlooked by testing
newbies.

------
trezor
Please tell me if I'm wrong, but quickly skimming this it seems this only
applies to dynamic laguages with no static typechecks what so ever at compile
time (if there's even such a thing).

While I see the good stuff about dynamic, less strict languages, especially
during the modelling & exploration phase, I still say that the fact that these
kind of problems _cannot_ exist in a statically typed environment is still one
of the reasons I don't feel like converting to more dynamic languages for any
production-class code I write.

When even your tests can pass without revealing broken class-interface
contracts, you are way beyond what I find reasonable to check for myself. Your
dynamic freedom forces you to do checks which even with a decades old compiler
you could have taken for granted.

