The presumption here is that you are a team of Kent Beck's. Mine isn't.
Yes, with a lot of work and time, we can come up with very good abstractions so that all code is easy to understand and follow and unit tests are all we need. But we don't have that time, nor often the skill needed. What we need is a running product, today, for our customers.
Integration tests are a crutch. Some of us need crutches. And I don't feel like I should be ashamed to need one sometimes.
> The presumption here is that you are a team of Kent Beck's
Not really. He explicitly says 'I’m happy to write integration tests. I insist on it'; in other words Kent Beck is admitting he doesn't always know how to perfect the underlying layers' design so as to push 'integration tests' towards being unit tests. But if he's right about the nature of the distinction, ie. that apparent 'integration tests' are really a symptom of underlying design limitations, it's surely a good thing to be aware of?
There are many areas where I do know my own code is problematic, but for lack of time or competence I can't improve it now. I don't believe I would be better off not knowing there was a problem.
Hang on a minute. I'm both Superprogrammer and a washed up old has-been? This is getting confusing.
There's no shame for me in using integration tests. They just hint at an alternate universe where the design is different and they either disappear entirely or become unit tests. So today isn't the day that happens. Okay. "Perfect" is a verb.
I'm struggling to understand how the transition from integration test to unit test might manifest in terms of a real world refactoring.
My 'integration tests' almost always cross the boundaries of two or more (theoretically) well-defined APIs. If they're within those boundaries, well, they're not really integrating anything, so I would just consider them a unit test.
Yes, with a lot of work and time, we can come up with very good abstractions so that all code is easy to understand and follow and unit tests are all we need. But we don't have that time, nor often the skill needed. What we need is a running product, today, for our customers.
Integration tests are a crutch. Some of us need crutches. And I don't feel like I should be ashamed to need one sometimes.