| ⛑️ Legacy Code: First Aid Kit | https://understandlegacycode.com/first-aid-kit |
"Refactoring at Scale" by
Maude Lemaire is now part of Understand Legacy Code bookshelf 🎉
I like how it's rooted in reality, with concrete use cases from the trenches at Slack
I wrote an overview of what I learned, so you can answer "Is this book relevant to my situation?" 😉
It's common for legacy code to have deeply nested statements
They make code harder to read/think about (cognitive overload) 😵💫
Did you know "Guard Clauses" can help you simplify these? Now you know 💂
Here's a JavaScript example 👇
Proximity Refactoring: things that change together, should be close together
💡 Detect change coupling between files with git and re-organize them accordingly!
Eg. moving tests next to code in a TypeScript codebase
"The goal is to construct a bounded context that always contains data we can trust as distinct from the untrusted outside world"
— Domain Modeling Made Functional
That's also true when dealing with Legacy Code!
In TypeScript, I like to use Zod to do so 😉
📢 JavaScript Developers
Ever wanted to switch an object formatting from single-line to multiple lines, and vice-versa?
You can do that in VS Code with very few keystrokes!
1️⃣ Check for "Join Lines" (⌃ J on macOS) ⚡
2️⃣ Insert space & format code to revert
First, "many args" is a code smell that can be fixed with a refactoring move:
✨ Preserve Whole Object ✨
Instead of a ragbag of args, you have a single object with a clear name.
It works
It depends on the size of the team
It does NOT depend on the size of the codebase
It's called "Hotspots Analysis" and it's GREAT for prioritizing Tech Debt 👍
By the way, Code Climate does show that…
"But where would I find the Urgency?"
Glad you asked!
Adam Tornhill wrote amazing books to show everything version control can give you ✨
From git you can tell what parts of the codebases are *actually* worked on. Put that "Churn" on a graph with Complexity, and voilà!