When to use mocks and their tradeoffs

A discussion about mocking in Python with the original contributor of unittest.mock, Michael Foord.

Of course we discuss mocking and unittest.mock. 

We also discuss:

• testing philosophy
• unit testing and what a unit is
• TDD
• where Michael's towel is, and what color

Micheal was instrumental in the building of testing tools for Python, and continues to be a pragmatic source of honest testing philosopy in a field that has a lot of contradictory information.

Links:

• unittest.mock - Python docs
• Mocks Aren't Stubs - Martin Fowler
• pytest-mock
• mock.patch
• Autospeccing
• Arrange Act Assert
• testing-in-python mailing list
• Classical and Mockist Testing — Classical and Mockist Testing 
• Test First Programming / Test First Development
• episode 102: Cosmic Python, TDD, testing and external dependencies - Harry Percival
• episode 132: mocking in Python - Anna-Lena Popkes
• pytest
• unittest - Python docs
• pytest assert usage
• 30 best practices for software development and testing | Opensource.com