Are mocks better than stubs?

Question

A while ago I read the Mocks Aren\'t Stubs article by Martin Fowler and I must admit I\'m a bit scared of external dependencies with regards to added complexity so I would like

Answer 1

Read Luke Kanies' discussion of exactly this question in this blog post. He references a post from Jay Fields which even suggests that using [a equivalent to ruby's/mocha's] stub_everything is preferrable to make the tests more robust. To quote Fields' final words: "Mocha makes it as easy to define a mock as it is to define a stub, but that doesn't mean you should always prefer mocks. In fact, I generally prefer stubs and use mocks when necessary."