Working Effectively With Legacy Code Michael C Feathers by Michael C. Feathers 9780131177052 instant download after payment.

Preface Do you remember the first program you wrote? I remember mine. It was a little graphics program I wrote on an early PC. I started programming later than most of my friends. Sure, I'd seen computers when I was a kid. I remember being really impressed by a minicomputer I once saw in an office, but for years I never had a chance to even sit at a computer. Later, when I was a teenager, some friends of mine bought a couple of the first TRS-80s. I was interested, but I was actually a bit apprehensive, too. I knew that if I started to play with computers, I'd get sucked into it. It just looked too cool. I don't know why I knew myself so well, but I held back. Later, in college, a roommate of mine had a computer, and I bought a C compiler so that I could teach myself programming. Then it began. I stayed up night after night trying things out, poring through the source code of the emacs editor that came with the compiler. It was addictive, it was challenging, and I loved it. I hope you've had experiences like thismdjust the raw joy of making things work on a computer. Nearly every programmer I ask has. That joy is part of what got us into this work, but where is it day to day? A few years ago, I gave my friend Erik Meade a call after I'd finished work one night. I knew that Erik had just started a consulting gig with a new team, so I asked him, "How are they doing?" He said, "They're writing legacy code, man." That was one of the few times in my life when I was sucker-punched by a coworker's statement. I felt it right in my gut. Erik had given words to the precise feeling that I often get when I visit teams for the first time. They are trying very hard, but at the end of the day, because of schedule pressure, the weight of history, or a lack of any better code to compare their efforts to, many people are writing legacy code. What is legacy code? I've used the term without defining it. Let's look at the strict definition: Legacy code is code that we've gotten from…