I struggle with this all the time. Data driven tests are awesome because you write so little code. But the code is often abstract and the data is long and hard to read.
I have never been a big fan of Cucumber either and I'm not convinced its more readable -- isn't it just more verbose? Interesting point about it being language agnostic though.
I guess I don't have a better solution to contribute. Just wanted to say yeah I have that problem too.
I also see Cucumber as a way of gluing specifications with implementation allowing you to regression test specifications.
You can end up with a very domain specific testing "language" (DSTL?) enabling developers and domain experts to start describing a lot of different behavior (specifications) to see if the current implementation supports the behavior.
If current implementation does not support the behavior, then you now have a specification to implement the behavior.
I have never been a big fan of Cucumber either and I'm not convinced its more readable -- isn't it just more verbose? Interesting point about it being language agnostic though.
I guess I don't have a better solution to contribute. Just wanted to say yeah I have that problem too.