Refactoring legacy code so you can understand it, test it and make it better

All code becomes legacy eventually. Whether you’re jumping into a codebase without context or trying to reign in a project that’s gotten larger, more complicated and harder to maintain, refactoring legacy code starts with learning to make sense of what's there.

Our Managing Legacy Code workshop will walk you through how to deal with legacy code from two angles. First, will help you understand the legacy code that you're dealing with, so we can find the best way to refactor the code and bring it up to best practices. Then, we'll discuss systems for maintaining context during a project, so you can avoid dealing with legacy code in the future.

By the end of the workshop, you'll know how to refactor code, how to test legacy code and how to prevent it from happening in the first place.

What it is

This interactive workshop will show you how to rescue code, starting with a legacy code analysis, then walking through refactoring code examples to learn how to understand, untangle and add testing to even the most challenging legacy codebases.

What you'll learn

You'll walk away from the workshop with a deeper understanding of refactoring legacy applications and new techniques for holding on to context during development. We'll also go over adding unit tests to legacy code and adding functionality with minimal impact on existing code.

Details

Full-day workshop:
$700 a person

Half-day workshop:
$400 a person

Check out our podcast on legacy code with author Michael Feathers

Michael Feathers, author of Working Effectively With Legacy Code joins us on the Tech Done Right podcast talk about technical debt, how communication can prevent bad coding practices and what it's like to go around the world seeing the worst code messes ever written. Listen now!

Listen to our podcast on legacy code with Michael Feathers

Michael Feathers, author of Working Effectively With Legacy Code joins us on the Tech Done Right podcast talk about technical debt, how communication can prevent bad coding practices and what it's like to go around the world seeing the worst code messes ever written. Listen now!

Listen to our podcast on legacy code with Michael Feathers

Michael Feathers, author of Working Effectively With Legacy Code joins us on the Tech Done Right podcast talk about technical debt, how communication can prevent bad coding practices and what it's like to go around the world seeing the worst code messes ever written. Listen now!

Why we trust Noel

Noel Rappin is our principal software engineer — he helps us build products, leads the apprenticeship program and hosts the Tech Done Right podcast. On his own time, he’s the author of multiple books on development best practices, including Rails 5 Test Prescriptions and Take My Money: Accepting Payments on the Web.

Noel also has a Ph.D. in educational technology and user-centered design, and while we tease him about being Dr. Noel, we’re lucky to have his mind on our team — and to be able to share it with others.