George Malamidis gave a talk at Ruby Tuesday last week about Synthesis which is a kind of mock verification framework. It was the second time I have heard George talk about Synthesis but I really didn’t get it first time (partly due to a pointless debate at the first talk about functional testing (interesting but irrelevant)). A different environment and it just zinged into place for me.

Synthesis ensures that if you mock an interaction between two collaborators you also have a non-mocked test for the method calls in the collaboration. In short it shows when you have stopped unit testing and started testing your mock framework.

Like most people at the talk I could see immediately how that would lead to less worrying about mocking and the good news is that Java port is being worked on.

I wonder if the issue will arise in the Geek Night on Wednesday?