[viraptor]

So that's basically allowing operations on a half-broken object, just so that you can test it without creating all the dependencies?... I see how it might be useful, but I just can't agree with that.

The tests are not the goal - a working product is. That's just making a trade-off between less lines in a test -vs- code that doesn't explode mid-transaction when that null suddenly occurs in a real-world scenario. If I'm supposed to write my code properly, testies should not be too lazy while writing the tests.

[omouse]

It's no longer a unit-test once you're putting the object into the living system. It becomes a system test and then you might as well test the whole system instead of faking things with mockups.