Fakes over Mocks: Shift your paradigm and identify monolithic code
summary
Company moves from heavy mocking to reusable fakes, replacing many mockito/mocktail uses and revealing hidden SRP violations: codebase shows 647 mocks declared before the shift. Engineering builds the charlatan package to fake HTTP clients and creates shared fakes for plugins and native boundaries, so tests exercise real behavior across network and platform. Teams run broader widget-level tests and full-feature flows using fakes for network and native boundaries, catch monolithic services, split responsibilities, and reduce brittle white-box verification.
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chapters (12)
- 0:00Introduction and speaker intro
- 1:58What are test doubles
- 4:24Mocks vs spies vs fakes
- 6:07Betterment’s testing evolution
- 8:57Over-reliance on mocks
- 11:44Hidden SRP violations
- 14:31Testing paradigm shift
- 16:39When mocks are still useful
- 18:04Where fakes fit now
- 20:29Path forward with fakes
- 21:55Testing beyond unit level
- 24:03Next steps and conclusion
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