Talk: Easier to change CODE
Talk: Easier to change CODE This is a talk from I T.A.K.E. Unconference 2016, Bucharest. It is a hands-on talk, where I refactor some code live with the help of the audience. Techniques During this…
Talk: Java User Group Łódź – Legacy Code is Fear
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…
Software Lost Video: James Shore – Rigorous, Professional Javascript
James Shore is one of the promoters of TDD in Javascript. He is presenting codecasts on his website Let’s Code Javascript about how to work effectively in Javascript.
As James says:
“JavaScript Needs Test-Driven Development
If you’ve programmed in JavaScript, you know that it’s an… interesting… language. Don’t get me wrong: I love JavaScript. I love its first-class functions, the intensive VM competition among browser makers, and how it makes the web come alive. It definitely has its good parts.
It also has some not-so-good parts. Whether it’s browser DOMs, automatic semicolon insertion, or an object model with a split personality, everyone’s had some part of JavaScript bite them in the butt at some point. That’s why using test-driven development is so important.”
Talk: Agile Lean Europe 2014 – Legacy Code is Fear
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. You are a programmer. Someone from the company…
Legacy Coderetreat: Part 9 – Use Mocking Framework
Use Mocking Framework
Blog post series
This blog post is part of a series about legacy coderetreat and legacy code techniques you can apply during your work. Please click to see more sessions about legacy code.
Purpose
By using mocking frameworks we are writing short and easy to read tests. The duplication of test doubles written by hand is minimized by the use mocking framework.
Legacy Coderetreat: Part 8 – Extract and Override
Extract and Override
Blog post series
This blog post is part of a series about legacy coderetreat and legacy code techniques you can apply during your work. Please click to see more sessions about legacy code.
Purpose
Almost always when needing to test existing code we bump against dependencies that make the system untestable. This technique is useful to extract the static dependencies. After that we can use dependency inversion in order to be able to really test the systems.
With this technique we can transform untestable systems into testable systems, step by step. The steps are small because we want to enable safety while changing the code.
Legacy Coderetreat: Episode 1 – From Nothing to System Tests Codecast
From Nothing to System Tests – Codecast Blog post series This blog post is part of a series about legacy coderetreat and legacy code techniques you can apply during your work. Please click to see…
Legacy Coderetreat: Part 2 – From Nothing to System Tests
From Nothing to System Tests
Blog post series
This blog post is part of a series about legacy coderetreat and legacy code techniques you can apply during your work. Please click to see more sessions about legacy code.
Purpose
Whenever I need to change an existing system I need a safety net. These system tests knit a coarse safety net, very good if you want to have the safety of changing code later without introducing defects.
This is the first thing I usually do when I start working with a system that:
- does not have any automated tests
- is totally unknown to me
This safety net will be used during the next phases when the code will be refactored and cleaned-up, before being modified. Now let’s see a bit about the concept of this session.
Legacy Coderetreat: Part 1 – Introduction
Legacy Coderetreat
Blog post series
This blog post is part of a series about legacy coderetreat and legacy code techniques you can apply during your work. Please click to see more sessions about legacy code.
A bit of history
On 26 November 2011 I had the honour of being an attendee at the second ever Legacy Coderetreat, which was supposed to be the first one in the world. But my friend Johan Martinsson from Grenoble beat Erik and me to it. Anyway I was part of the second ever Legacy Coderetreat in the world, facilitated by JB Rainsberger. JB had come with this concept of using the Coderetreat format, but for legacy code.
At the beginning of the day he presented us the problem, like in any other coderetreat. The problem was an ugly trivia game and you can find the sources here. At that time the code base was translated, from Java, only in a couple of other languages. Now you can find almost any language you want, thanks to the worldwide community of passionate developers who translated the code base.
JB facilitated the event like you could find in here, with a lot of details. But in short we would start with a free session, then follow with Golden Masters, continue with Subclass to Test, Replace Inheritance with Delegation and then Pure Functions. After each iteration we deleted the code like in any other coderetreat and swapped the pairs.
I liked a lot the fact that JB started this idea, because I am a big lover of working with legacy code. And this Legacy Coderetreat is such a good way to practice. But I had some other ideas on how to make it different.
The history of “Taking Baby Steps”
The history of Taking Baby Steps
Let me tell you a story on how I thought about teaching other programmers how to take small steps to help them minimize the mistakes by focusing on a small thought.
A couple of years ago I was working on a legacy project, meaning I did not know anything about the business, and it was written in Delphi .Net which was totally unknown to me. I needed to translate this medium-sized code-base from Delphi .Net into .Net / Silverlight.