BDD Does Not Require Gherkin: The Case for Plain-Code Acceptance Tests

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Software developer and long-time BDD practitioner argues that Cucumber's Gherkin format has been conflated with BDD itself, even though the two are distinct concepts. In practice, acceptance criteria are typically written in Jira tickets and then manually copied into feature files by developers, creating redundant maintenance overhead across three artefacts instead of one. Gherkin's plain-text, regex-bound step definitions resist IDE refactoring, accumulate glue code, and produce reports that omit what the system actually did during a test run. The author contends that the constraints which made Gherkin a reasonable choice around 2008 no longer exist, while its costs remain. Modern alternatives such as Kotest BehaviorSpec, JGiven, or Yatspec can deliver Given-When-Then structure, readable output, and full refactoring support directly in code.

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