Comments on: let’s spy

By: black

black — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 08:40:27 +0000

Is there any step by step tutorial about Mockito. How I can use it in my hadoop cluster? Please help me. I’m just learning hadoop so I’m beginner.

By: should I worry about the unexpected? « monkey island

should I worry about the unexpected? « monkey island — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 17:33:34 +0000

[...] it’s relevant. That’s why I really like state based testing. That’s why I prefer spying to mocking. Finally, that’s why I don’t write verifyNoMoreInteractions() in every [...]

By: Jon

Jon — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 01:28:25 +0000

Personally, I’d prefer to keep calling them “mocks.” Three reasons:

1. Discoverability. Everyone knows that they need a mock framework — I have no idea why I’d need a “spy” framework. You’d have to educate everyone what Mockito (Spyito? ) even does before they’d realize that they’re interested in it. This kind of goes to Hamlet’s point about “Test Spy” not being a well-known term.

2. Consistency. Yes, yes — it’s fine to argue about language purity. But in my experience, the term “mock” has come to mean what language purists refer to as a “Test Double” — any object that can impersonate another and provide test support/verification. And that’s fine, right? There’s nothing inherently bad about calling those things “mocks.”

3. Catchiness. “Mock” sounds less intimidating than “Spy” and is catchier than “Test Double.”

Anyway, $0.02 from the peanut gallery.

By: felix

felix — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 20:00:27 +0000

sorry guys i am a bit late. but 1. mockito provides stubs and spys. and as it happens what mockito now calls a mock is both. so why not define: mock implements stub, spy. then we can safely carry on calling these things mocks. btw i have no idea how mezaros defines stub .

By: Hamlet D'Arcy

Hamlet D'Arcy — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 20:07:25 +0000

This is really great. It’s so nice to get away from record/playback when it is unneeded. Here is my first impressions: http://hamletdarcy.blogspot.com/2008/03/mockito-new-mock-framework-on-block.html

By: Hamlet D'Arcy

Hamlet D'Arcy — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:36:44 +0000

I’m really glad you’re addressing the test spy issue. I totally agree that Test Spys are necessary to writing clear and concise mockist style unit tests. It was the largest take-away I had from Gerard Mezaros’ xUnit Patterns.

I think the Test Spy issue hasn’t gained traction for two reasons:
1: The only place I’ve seen them mentioned is in xUnit Patterns
2. As people learn to write unit tests, the progression from beginner to expert seems to progress from simple state tests, to hand rolled mocks, then to the most popular mock frameworks (EasyMock, jMock). Mockito is the first spy framework I’d seen released. I think Test Spys are the next step in test evolution as far as history goes, but I think they should be between “hand rolled mocks” and “mock frameworks” in the learning progression.

I really want to play with Mockito in the next couple weeks and I promise to let you know what I think. I think the potential is huge because of the over-specified software the record-playback encourages. Thanks for putting this out there!