Working effectively with legacy code isn’t all about creating test harnesses before refactoring algorithms. The "safety first" strategy doesn’t always apply. Not if the code you’re looking at is LYING IN YOUR FACE anyway.

In this talk I’ll show you what brutal refactoring is. I’ll show you the red glowy eyes of the Churn. And I’ll hold up some big warning signs that should prevent you from producing legacy code today.

Table flips allowed.

A mini-workshop on maintaining a Living documentation for your software projects. The workshop is based on the book Living documentation by Cyrille Martraire.

Of course, you should read all you can about SOLID, Design patterns, Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture, etc. Once you have a basic understanding of these topics you still have to write that code though, and write it well too! What is good code? Are there some guidelines, or rules of thumb, which you can follow while making your everyday coding decisions?

In this talk I'll cover many of these coding guidelines, which aren't usually covered by patterns or principles books. They should help you write better code and give you a richer vocabulary for reviewing other people's code. Some of the subjects that we'll discuss are: state, mutability, CQS, one-method objects, domain-first, API-driven, functional programming influences, object boundaries, (de)serialization, and many more!