I've started to really dive deep(er) into mock objects. I'm still highly skeptical about them (for reasons I won't go into here), but I am testing out Rhino Mocks for a project.
As such, I finally got around to watching Ayende's webcast introduction of it.
He starts off by noting that he is not a native English speaker, that he has a thick accent, etc. etc. etc. but I never had a moment of difficulty understanding him. The fact that he isn't a native English speaker means he was consciously aware of what he was saying, which led to a few funny comments, such as: "I am explicitly expecting no exception...What a stupid sentence", but all of that is normal.
If you've ever heard a taped play-back of a conversation you've had, you have almost undoubtedly sounded a lot worse (this is why prosecutors sometimes have problems with wiretap cases....you aren't aware of how 'incomprehensible' normal speech is (which relies on visual cues, hand gestures, context, etc.) when read out loud).
Watching the web cast, a few things were very clear:
1) This is not an introductory webcast for people new to mocking objects. It is an introductory webcast for people who are familiar with other mocking frameworks. If you didn't have any context for what mocks are about, you would be very confused. He does give an introduction of what he is going to be talking about, and why mocks are useful, but the actual presentation is not '101' level material.
2) I guess this goes without saying, but you can tell that he *really* knows what the fuck he is talking about. I mean, one would hope he would know how Rhino Mocks works, and that's obvious, but the side-comments along the lines of "Well, I needed to do this because the compiler complained" just indicates his deep knowledge of all sorts of things.
3) I'm still highly skeptical of mock objects. Little from the webcast changed that, but, to be fair, it takes a *really* good webcast to change a mindset.
4) The most I 'learned' was watching a very, very highly trained developer refactor live. I understood the changes he was making (I think) as he made them, and just seeing them live made me realize how far I have to go in that area. You could see why certain coding styles are so tied into tools like ReSharper, and why some think Microsoft's Entity Framework gets in the way.
I don't think I'll watch it again. Well, I don't think i'll watch it again unless I become less skeptical of mocks and/or need to mock SMS, but it's a good view.