[amw-zero]

What I got out of the article was that, in unit tests, you should stub the response of a database query. However, you shouldn't directly assert that some database API method is called, because that is one additional level of coupling.

What I don't understand is, a stub to me is almost the same level of coupling as a mock. Your test setup needs to know about the dependency on what you're stubbing. So when you want to change the interface of the dependency or use a different one, or remove the dependency, your tests have to change.

It's not like you can add a query to an operation that didn't have one previously and the result will magically appear without connecting to a real database. So you have to modify the tests to provide the stub. Seems like a logical contradiction to me.