I am always suprised when someone announces someone or something is dead.  

Sometimes, as in the case with the news "Mark Twain is dead", it is premature, even soliciting a response from the alleged dead....

Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

Sometimes, as in the case of John Lennon, it was, unfortunately, true. 

While sometimes true, sometimes not...always, always "...is dead" is a surprise. 

With technology, "....is dead" is sometimes announced at the peak of a technology, as with Paul Graham's announcement "Microsoft is Dead".   Well, this could be a simple case of the premature Mark Twain death...as we know Microsoft is still very much an alive multi-billion dollar going concern.  But the announcement of Microsoft's death is different, not just an error, but the literary hook on an interesting essay. 

So in the same vein as Paul Graham's announcement "Microsoft is Dead",  I wonder,  "Is JUnit is dead?"

Exhibit A, JUnit  has steadily declining interest on search enginges, as shown by Google Insight.    Okay, not dead yet, but we could extrapolate that trend and determine the exact point when JUnit will be truly dead.  So like in Monty Python and The Holy Grail, JUnit is uttering "I am not dead yet".

But why the declining interest?  I think JUnit is a good thing.   JUnit has spawned a cottage industry of extensions: dbUnit, JUNitPerf, easymock, jmock, HTTPUnit, etc....  and is a the heart of Test-driven Development and Extreme Programming.   Is it that JUnit has become an essential, albeit boring, piece of the Java development puzzle?  Uninteresting and essential as say...Xereces?

I find it interesting that ...while JUnit interest is declining, interest in mocking is increasing.   Because JUnit, while good, is not a panacea, and as soon as you start testing, then you find out what mocking really means.  Maybe this is a good sign.

Okay, so JUnit isn't dead, I take it back.  Rumors of it's death are premature.  Maybe JUnit is becoming like Harry Potter's Voldemort of testing...."He who cannot be mentioned."