Talk: Java User Group Łódź – Legacy Code is Fear

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Talk: Legacy Code is Fear (Łódź, Poland)

Legacy code is fear because we fear the unknown. Learn what you need to learn in order to be less scared about legacy code during this talk.

This is a talk from last year, before Global Day of Coderetreat Lodz.

You are a programmer. Someone from the company comes with an idea to add a feature and they are sure this new feature is very easy to add. And it should be. But the code is old. The code is a mess. Nobody in the firm knows any more that part of the system. You need to change that ugly piece of code. You are afraid that you might introduce defects. Legacy code is fear.

This talk is about how our unknowns make us feel frightened. We need to get passed that and learn techniques, practice them, understand how and when to use them. Only with more knowledge we will be able to tackle legacy code. But how do we acquire knowledge? We need to read, try, experiment, fail, and many more with some learning code base. Then we need do the same with production code. My advice is to never try these legacy code techniques on your legacy code base at work. You will be disappointed in the beginning because they will be difficult to apply. That is why it is important to start small, with an easier to understand code base in order to learn. And only after you can refactor that simpler code base, it is the time to start using the legacy code techniques on the bigger code base from work.

 

Here are the slides for the talk:

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