---
title: "Acceptance Frameworks Vs. Specification APis"
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2013/3/29/acceptance-frameworks-vs-specification-apis.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2013/3/29/acceptance-frameworks-vs-specification-apis.html"
published: "2013-03-29T14:40:35"
updated: "2013-03-29T14:40:35"
tags: ["Unit Testing"]
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "I see two forms of ‘BDD’ tools floating in the wild. The first form, let`s call it ‘deep BDD’ for now, requires you to go through a special langauge filter, before translating it with special adapters into executable…"
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# Acceptance Frameworks Vs. Specification APis

By Roy Osherove March 29, 2013 In [Unit Testing](https://osherove.com/blog/category/unit-testing)

**Historical article** · Originally published March 29, 2013; technical details may be outdated.

I see two forms of ‘BDD’ tools floating in the wild.

The first form, let\`s call it ‘deep BDD’ for now, requires you to go through a special langauge filter, before translating it with special adapters into executable specifications. Think Cucumber’s Gherkin forcing you to write adapters in code to execute your tests. Or SpecFlow’s _Gherkin_ with .NET step definitions.

The second form, let’s call it ‘shallow BDD’ are tools that only give you an API to develop with, but no natural language interface to discuss with end users, or for giving end users to edit on their own. Think RSpec, MSpec or NSpec – they are literally just libraries that allow you to write your “tests” in a more BDD like API.

Deep BDD tools give you more permission to get out of your comfort zone and talk to a customer, while shallow BDD tools give you more permission to stay in side your comfort zone – your code, and to just stay with yourself, coding into the night, not having to talk to anybody, still feeling you’re awesome because you are dong ‘BDD’.

In that way, shallow bdd tools are just shiny wrappers on unit testing tools, while deep BDD tools make us work harder for communication.

## More in Unit Testing

[All posts in Unit Testing](https://osherove.com/blog/category/unit-testing)

- Jun 4, 2013

    ### [Ugly Code Means Your Product Used to be Successful](https://osherove.com/blog/2013/6/4/ugly-code-means-your-product-used-to-be-successful.html)

- Apr 10, 2013

    ### [April 18: Refactoring and Design Skills for Test Driven Development Workshop](https://osherove.com/blog/2013/4/11/april-18-refactoring-and-design-skills-for-test-driven-devel.html)

- Mar 28, 2013

    ### [Using System.Transactions.TransactionScope to Rollback Database changes under an integration test](https://osherove.com/blog/2013/3/28/using-systemtransactionstransactionscope-to-rollback-databas.html)

- Jul 12, 2012

    ### [Video: (part 8 - The big Refactoring) TDD Pairing a Go Game Engine](https://osherove.com/blog/2012/7/13/video-part-8-the-big-refactoring-tdd-pairing-a-go-game-engin.html)


---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

### Social

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- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/

### Contact

- Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7

### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/