Decoupled Design
Recently, I’ve had a large number of discussions around the use of mocks for testing, probably because I keep saying that Mocks are Evil. As a result, I’ve had to articulate how I design systems. This...
View ArticleMock Free Example, Part 1: Project Intro
Previously, I presented mocks as nuclear weapons. Unsurprisingly, commenters wanted examples. I exist to serve. This series will discuss a partly-completed project that I have lying around. The project...
View ArticleMock Free Example, part 2: Simulators
One of the common uses for mocks is to replace expensive or stateful components, such as file systems, networks, GUIs, and databases. However, I also see a cluster of other problems that arise at...
View ArticleMock Free Example, Part 3: Fixing Untestable Code Sequences
In my character printer, at one point I had some code like this monstrosity. I know it’s a monster, because testing it Requires at least one test double (the _character field). Involves running a bunch...
View ArticleNew Simulators Library
I just published an early relese of my Simulated.FileSystem library. This library makes it easier to separate platform concerns out of my models. It works really well with a hexagonal architecture....
View ArticleEasily Eliminate Most Mocks
In previous discussions about mock-free unit testing, I’ve shown techniques that I use to eliminate the hard-to-eliminate test doubles. I’ve skipped the simple techniques that I apply all the time....
View ArticleMock Free Example 4: Everything’s Better with Async
In the previous post in this series (“last week” to those who didn’t read it over a year ago), I made simple code complicated in the effort to make it unit testable. It was all going along fine, until...
View ArticleThe No Mocks Book
Recently on twitter, Clayton asked for a good book about unit testing without mocks. I don’t believe such a thing can be written, so I’ll try to write it in one blog post. First, here it is in one...
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