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Working Effectively with Legacy Code (Robert C Martin) + Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship (Robert C. Martin) + Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests (Beck Signature)
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Product details

  • Paperback: 456 pages
  • Publisher: Prentice Hall; 1 edition (22 Sep 2004)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0131177052
  • ISBN-13: 978-0131177055
  • Product Dimensions: 23.1 x 17.8 x 2.3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 20,826 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
    #8 in  Books > Computing & Internet > Programming > Languages > C & C++

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  • See Complete Table of Contents

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Michael C. Feathers
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Product Description

Product Description

This book provides programmers with the ability to cost effectively handlecommon legacy code problems without having to go through the hugelyexpensive task of rewriting all existing code. It describes a series of practicalstrategies that developers can employ to bring their existing softwareapplications under control. The author provides useful guidance about how touse these strategies when refactoring or making functional changes to codebases. One of the book's key points is that it teaches developers to write teststhat can be used to make sure they are not unintentionally changing theapplication as they optimize it. Examples are provided in Java, C++, and Csharp,and the book assumes that the reader has some knowledge of UMLnotation. Strategies using UML and code in C++ and Java primarily whilelanguage independent advice will be delivered in side bars and appendices forlanguage specific users.

From the Back Cover

Get more out of your legacy systems: more performance, functionality, reliability, and manageability

Is your code easy to change? Can you get nearly instantaneous feedback when you do change it? Do you understand it? If the answer to any of these questions is no, you have legacy code, and it is draining time and money away from your development efforts.

In this book, Michael Feathers offers start-to-finish strategies for working more effectively with large, untested legacy code bases. This book draws on material Michael created for his renowned Object Mentor seminars: techniques Michael has used in mentoring to help hundreds of developers, technical managers, and testers bring their legacy systems under control.

The topics covered include

  • Understanding the mechanics of software change: adding features, fixing bugs, improving design, optimizing performance
  • Getting legacy code into a test harness
  • Writing tests that protect you against introducing new problems
  • Techniques that can be used with any language or platform—with examples in Java, C++, C, and C#
  • Accurately identifying where code changes need to be made
  • Coping with legacy systems that aren't object-oriented
  • Handling applications that don't seem to have any structure

This book also includes a catalog of twenty-four dependency-breaking techniques that help you work with program elements in isolation and make safer changes.


© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

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Working Effectively with Legacy Code (Robert C Martin)
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Customer Reviews

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20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars practical and helpful advice on testing, 26 Feb 2006
By A Customer
This review is from: Working Effectively with Legacy Code (Robert C Martin) (Paperback)
This book focuses on how best to treat existing, large and probably poorly designed code, when needing to add features. This is most likely to happen when you have big old code that needs maintaining, but a lot of the advice is directly applicable to open source projects that lack tests and documentation. Therefore this can be considered as a valuable addition to the literature on testing and refactoring.

The advocated approach is rooted in writing unit tests and refactoring. Each chapter is themed around a problem (e.g. "Dependencies on Libraries is Killing Me", "I Don't Understand the Code Well Enough to Change It"), and then a series of techniques are suggested. At the back of the book are a series of refactorings, specifically for dealing with large classes, with some platform specific approaches, such as C++ forbidding the use of virtual functions that resolve to subclasses in constructors.

The code is mainly in Java, with a large number of examples in C++, and a handful in C and C#. You can probably get by with just knowing Java.

To get the most out of this book, I would suggest having read Martin Fowler's Refactoring first. It would also help to be familiar with the JUnit Java testing framework, which is used for the testing examples throughout. If you don't already know JUnit, you can pick up enough knowledge from the many articles on the web, and you certainly don't need to have read a book on Test Driven Development.

A reasonable measure of the quality of a book such as this is if it changes the way you code. It did so for me, and I recommend this as another high quality book in the Robert C. Martin series.

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent!, 4 Dec 2009
By Anders Juul Larsen (Denmark) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Working Effectively with Legacy Code (Robert C Martin) (Paperback)
I attended Feathers' speach at JAOO this year and was highly motivated to work with legacy code - I really wanted to try out all the presented techniques! I wished for the next contract to be a legacy project, and lo and behold, wishes do come true.

Given that, I was highly motivated when my copy arrived in the mail and ate it in three healthy bites - not leaving too much time to sleep when you have a wife and two small kids that you want to see too!

MF starts by stating that 'good code is code under test'.

The highligt is to some extend the 20-something page introduction. MF manages to set the arena for working with legacy code and pass on the enthusiasm of getting a job done on difficult terms. I mean, if you can be a success with green field projects, thats fine, but how well do you cope with legacy code?

Following that is a rather lengthy catalog of ways to get code under test. Much of the time you'd nod and say, yes, I've seen mess like this before - so that is how I could have dealt with it!

Having had the time to try to work by the principles, I'd summarize that the book has given me a professional lift. Many a time, I'd have to bypass the good advice due to pressure to produce short-term results, but over-all I'd say that more and more of the 'tricks' gets used and with good results.

Highly reccommended!
Anders, M.Comp.Sc., Contractor, Denmark
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A very useful book, 20 Sep 2008
This review is from: Working Effectively with Legacy Code (Robert C Martin) (Paperback)
The biggest single problem I had when I moved from working for myself as a programmer back to the mainstream was dealing with other people's code. For nearly twenty years I only had to deal with my own code. Suddenly I had to understand and change other people's code. It was quite a culture shock, and one of the most difficult things I've done.

I wish I'd found Michael's book earlier, it would have helped ease the transition. Of course, not everyone else's code is legacy code, but even if you are not handling true 'legacy' code, this book will help you deal with the problems you face.

The book is in three parts. The first is a discussion of how you go about changing software that is badly structured and has complex interactions and side effects. Where do you start, and how do you make sure that you don't break things further down the convoluted chain of dependencies. The answer to the latter, of course, is testing, testing, testing, and the author makes a good enough case to persuade even the most sloth like to get into the testing mode.

The second part of the book is organised almost like an FAQ with chapters devoted to common problems like 'I don't understand the code well enough to change it'. This one crops up all too often, and is an excellent example of how the author doesn't avoid difficult questions. The final part of the book is a useful catalog of mostly pattern based techniques that can be used to break dependencies.

The book is well written and features clear examples that are written in either C++, Java, C and C#, and the problems caused by the different features, or lack of them, available to the different languages are discussed and work arounds suggested. I enjoyed reading this book.

Highly recommended!


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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Extremely useful!
This is definitely one of those books that I will continuously refer to when faced with the task of maintaining legacy software. It has a permanent place on my reference shelf! Read more
Published 4 months ago by David JM Emmett

5.0 out of 5 stars Standard Text
I have a few (5 or so) programming books that I hold in very high regards. This is one of them. I intend to keep this one close to hand. Read more
Published 6 months ago by O. Arnold

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book
Got the book after attending one of the authors presentations. Excellent advice on how to apply TDD to existing code. Read more
Published on 21 May 2006 by Mr. S. P. Bracken

4.0 out of 5 stars A guide to retrofitting unit tests to existing code.
The books definiton of Legacy code is code not covered by unit tests.
This book covers adding unit tests to existing code. Read more
Published on 30 Dec 2005 by chriseyre2000

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