I see this mostly in Java. Outside, you can deal with simple dsls (it "should something") and simple functions (equal x, y).

But yeah, on Java and C# land, the complexities of the type system and the class based OO complect the testing, yielding this big complex testing system (which are large enough to be called testing frameworks).

I'm sorry; I think I'm being dense - what is their use in that context?

(I don't disagree with your main point, but I don't quite see where those techniques fit in).

Some examples off the top of my head that use these techniques:

* code generators: Visual Studio, Eclipse

* monkey patching: RSpec

* natural language DSL: Cucumber

Thanks! Very good examples.

I can see how monkey patching could be useful in mocking or something similar. I've never really used a language that supports it though.

I'm not entirely sure what Eclipse's code generation has to do with testing, but given the other examples I'll assume I'm being stupid again ;) I'm actually working with a lot of EMF generation stuff at the minute which can be quite painful.