Mock test objects

At work we have a number of server-side unit tests. I find some of these annoying. Server-side we offer various services which to some extent use each other internally. For unit tests there is not a real server running so when a test tries executing some server-side code there must be mock objects that fake appropriate responses from the other parts of the server that they attempt to use.

On the one hand, such unit tests typically run quickly and easily enough that they can be placed quite early in our code quality checks: a problematically failing test can be discovered long before the culprit is merged into a running server and the integration test suite run against it. (The integration tests use a real running server.)

On the other hand, not only are these fake appropriate responses an inferior substitute for the real thing, meaning that the unit tests are perhaps not testing a server that properly corresponds to reality, but as somebody who works on the server internals I find these unit tests a maintenance headache: if I change something about how the server works then I must fix the affected unit tests to fake new values in a new way. That is, I effectively have to correspondingly adjust the sequences of behavior from the fake server.

Times may be changing in relevant ways. Perhaps ( the computing cost of running integration tests was much larger. )

At my last job we had ( a less manual approach to providing data for tests. )

I should clarify that I am fine with unit tests in general: I have written various new ones into our codebase but mine do not exercise internal server dependencies enough to require many return values from mock objects to be faked.

Following on from my previous comments about contemporary code quality, ( surprise test failures suggest the code was not thought through well. )

Grenfell Tower fire surprises

The development of news story of the fire that gutted Grenfell Tower has been an ongoing surprise to me.

Initially I somewhat dismissed the wall-to-wall news coverage. The BBC in particular seem keen to let a large news story wholly dominate live news for many hours even when new information comes at a low rate. I often wish they would give a summary and update on the half-hour but cover other stories too in between. Also, the fire was in London and I suspected that having the main news coverage decision-makers also in London elevated the fire's apparent signifiance. Further, initial official reports of the death toll were not high.

I had failed to quickly apprehend that the real death toll is probably high indeed: that there were initially many missing people who probably mostly range from unrecovered to unidentifiable.

Additionally, the preventability of the tragedy is a significant news story in its own right. Do government building regulations, whether national or local, really tolerate such devastating firetraps, even despite previous related fires and expert testimony that clearly warned of the risk? Maybe so, in which case some public officials may be truly culpable and people in other tower blocks may now be living in some peril. It is all the more surprising given how tight UK building regulations typically are and have been for many years.

A further surprise to me has been the public anger focusing on Teresa May of all people even after the government announced a public inquiry. I find it hard to imagine that she is high on the list of those truly responsible for the fire or for the immediate aftermath. I did not feel bad for her after the general election but in this case I do. Perhaps I am again wrong and she does somehow warrant being the focus of the current protests. I wonder if her crime is not one of material actions but instead of failure to obviously emote in the expected manner.