Taming Unruly Production Code (2-day workshop)

Most dev teams “own” some code that they don’t really want to work with. However it got there, the code is scary but pretty stable and requires updates. The code might be a tangled mess or it might be well factored code but if it doesn’t have automated tests to give us confidence in our changes, it’s still difficult to update.

Michael Feathers says “with tests, we can change the behavior of our code quickly and verifiably. Without them, we really don’t know if our code is getting better or worse.”

This experiential workshop will equip you with tools and techniques for dealing with unruly code. You will get hands-on practice with the process of dealing with code that doesn’t have tests. Starting with characterization tests, we’ll understand what the code is doing and then methodically refactor the code to allow for unit tests.

You will love learning about:

Characterization tests

Clean code

Code smells – identify and resolve

Expressive naming

Refactoring

Four rules of simple design

XUnit (JUnit, NUnit) and other testing frameworks

Test doubles such as mocks, fakes, and stubs

Patterns and anti-patterns

You’ll be with us from 9:00 am to 4:30 pm both days and lunch is included with the cost of registration. Programming will be done on our machines, but we recommend that you bring a device for some activities.