Live Stream Recording: Testing and Refactoring Legacy Code

Ida Bzowska

Those who couldn’t join us for our show can catch up by watching the recording on our YouTube channel.

Sandro Mancuso’s first startup project was the canvas for our testing and refactoring practices during the IntelliJ IDEA December Live Stream.

Sandro took us on a nostalgic tour through the 20-year-old codebase. Years ago, Sandro implemented his first startup idea, a social network for travelers, and spent a full year on development. After a long break, Sandro decided to dive back into the project to refresh his memory and show us how to work with legacy code.

We learned the general rules of refactoring and testing, and Sandro showed us many essential tips, like which debugging methodology to choose, how to navigate the code’s landscape, and how to implement the SEAM technique.

The goal was to achieve 100% test coverage and then refactor it – and we did it all in under 90 minutes!

He also shared his insights on being more productive and building self-confidence while working with code. 

Thanks to our guest, the live stream served as a very practical workshop. If you are eager to learn more, check out Sandro’s katas on GitHub. During the session, Sandro mentioned the book Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers. If you don’t have it on your bookshelf, you should give it a try!

Keep testing and refactoring, and we’ll see you at the live stream next month!

Your presenter and host

Sandro Mancuso

Sandro is a software craftsman, author, founder of the London Software Craftsmanship Community (LSCC), and co-founder of Codurance. Sandro has been coding from a very young age, but only started his professional career in 1996. He has worked for startups, software houses, product companies, international consultancy companies, and investment banks. During his career, Sandro had the opportunity to work on a variety of projects with different languages, technologies, and across many different industries. Sandro has vast experience in bringing the Software Craftsmanship ideology and Extreme Programming practices to organisations of all sizes. Sandro is internationally renowned for his work on evolving and spreading Software Craftsmanship and is frequently invited to speak at many conferences around the world. His professional aspiration is to raise the bar of the software industry by helping developers improve and care more about their craft.

Mala Gupta

Mala works as a Java Developer Advocate with JetBrains. A Java Champion, she has authored multiple books with Manning, Packt, and O’Reilly Publications. She has 20 years of experience in the software industry and is a frequent speaker at international industry conferences. She actively supports Java certification as a path to career advancement and co-leads Delhi JUG and Women Who Code Delhi.

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