Comment by dpark | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dpark | Hacker News Reader

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> One group of people says "these should all be called mocks". Another group says "these are mocks, stubs, spies, and fakes, respectively, and collectively these are called test doubles". You can prefer the simplicity of calling them all "mocks" (simplicity is nice) but that leaves you with no way to distinguish between the types.

I'm not saying that those should all be called mocks. I'm saying that are all called mocks by many developers already. There are frameworks that call themselves things like Moq and EasyMock that support multiple of the paradigms you describe. Picking "objects that demand to be interacted with" as the only real "mocks" feels arbitrary and frankly wrong given that the term "mock" has exactly nothing to do with requiring tests to cause certain method calls with certain params.

I'm totally fine with saying that we should recognize the difference between types of doubles and give them different names. I'm not on board with saying that suddenly a "method" is a function with no side effects as if that's some standard definition.

> and "we should not use separate words at all", mostly favored by those who haven't used a lot of doubles.

This is not subtle. And asserting that every with experience agrees with you does not make it true. I have written enough tests to have a legitimate opinion on this. I have also written test code filled with "mocks" that predates this article.

I didn't say that you are wrong. I didn't say "that everyone with experience agrees with [me]". I specifically used the words "mostly favored by" twice. Mostly does not mean "everyone".

It's fine if you want to use different words. But you either have words for the different types or not. And if you have separate words, you either use the five existing ones or try to push five new ones. I think it's significant that you objected to my claim about the popular taxonomy without suggesting five alternative terms with even a fraction of the adoption. (I've built an entire career partly on popularizing this stuff and I've never even encountered a competing set of terms!)

My comment at the bottom was pointing out that you basically called people who don't agree with you amateurs. Yes, you qualified it with "most" but the sentiment remains. This sort of response is especially unhelpful when the "amateurs" being dismissed are not laypeople but professionals in the same field. It's like a group of heart surgeons asserting that arteries are very specifically the blood vessels that carry blood from the heart to the lungs and then calling general practitioners inexperienced for not getting on board with the retroactive redefinition.

I also don't believe it's reasonable to assert that I have to provide new terminology in order to point out that this definition is fundamentally problematic and does not match the common usage. But if you want a word, call it a preset (because all the interactions are defined in advance) or a mine field (because if you step in the wrong place, it blows up your test, and because your grandkids will still be dealing with the mess).

It's possible to be a world-class programmer and think that test doubles are a silly waste of time. Many of the programmers whom I admire most think that. Nothing that I said precludes it. I now regret writing my monthly comment on the web.

I overreacted to a phrasing issue and it drowned out the rest of the discussion. That's my fault, and I'm sorry, because you legitimately tried to engage in discussion and I was rude. I appreciate your insight here and while I don't agree with the definition being asserted for "mock", I understand the desire for more fine-grained terminology.

I hope your next monthly comment isn't wasted on someone who overreacts to one tiny piece like I did.

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