.NET Musings

Today Telerik launched a free edition of it’s commercial mocking tool, JustMock Free Edition.  The commercial version of JustMock has been out now for a while, and brings incredible power to the table, such as mocking sealed and static classes, non-public members and types, as well as many more features.  For more information on the commercial version of JustMock, see  http://www.telerik.com/products/mocking.aspx.

I do a lot of testing.  I am addicted to TDD/BDD, and can’t live without a mocking tool. The new (or “greenfield”) code that I develop is based on interfaces, SOLID, etc., and I don’t always need all of that extra power. For straight up mocking with no frills, any of the free open source frameworks do pretty much what I need.

But then there’s that pesky legacy code that everyone is afraid to touch.  Lots of stuff that just can’t be handled by the free mocking frameworks.  Either you white knuckle the keyboard and dive in without tests (ick), or purchase a commercial mocking framework.  If you do purchase one of the commercial tools, you will have two different mocking frameworks to support.  (Unless you want to refactor all of your other code to use the commercial product as well – and we all have lots of free time to do that, right?).

Releasing a free version of JustMock is an awesome step by a company (note they are also my employer) that flat out “gets it”.  It’s one of the main reasons that I wanted to work for Telerik.  There was a need in the development community for a clear path between free and commercial mocking frameworks, and it just makes sense to use one tool, one syntax, to do both jobs.  Start with JustMock Free Edition, and then upgrade to the Commercial version when you need to, and all of your existing code still works - you don’t have to refactor a thing.  Still the same tool, just now with added awesome sauce.

Another added benefit of using JustMock Free Edition over the open source frameworks is that there are many features in JustMock that Telerik included in the Free Edition that are not necessarily supported by its OSS counterparts.  (This is not a knock in any way on the OSS tools – it’s just that you can get a lot more features into a product when the developers are working on it full time.)

The code that comprises the Free Edition is the foundation for the full version, so it will be included as well in the three major releases Telerik is committed to every year, in addition to service packs and hotfixes where necessary.  It really is an awesome move.

And by the way, if you have a license to the Telerik Ultimate Collection, you already have the commercial version!

Over the next few posts I will be diving into how and why you would use a mocking tool like JustMock, so stay tuned!

Happy Coding!