I don't understand how you can be 100% against mocking. When I want to visualize testing, I often find it useful to think about how it's applied in the real world. For example, when building a car, the parts are tested in isolation (for the most part). Individual parts are tested - size, shape, stress, etc. Groups of parts are also tested in isolation. For example, the engine is actually connected to a mock drivetrain, mock computer, mock user inputs, etc. I see that as useful, and I think the same goes for software. It can simply be too costly in terms of time, bandwidth, etc to test against real resources.