How are Mocks meant to be used?

Question

When I originally was introduced to Mocks I felt the primary purpose was to mock up objects that come from external sources of data. This way I did not have to maintain an

Answer 1

Yes, I agree. I see mocking as sometimes painful, but often necessary, for your tests to truly become unit tests, i.e. only the smallest unit that you can make your test concerned with is under test. This allows you to eliminate any other factors that could potentially affect the outcome of the test. You do end up with a lot more small tests, but it becomes so much easier to work out where a problem is with your code.