Fixing Legacy Code
Working on a green-field project where you can start from scratch and avoid all the annoyances you experienced in earlier projects is fun. However, most developers cannot enjoy this pleasure but work with legacy code 99% of their time. Even harder, many green-field projects turn into legacy within months or even weeks.
Legacy code is hard or even impossible to adapt, implementing new features is costly and putting the code under test is rather challenging. The first thing that needs to be done when attempting to escape legacy hell is to identify the structure of the issues that exist in the code. After that, a strategy to test the most important features needs to be worked out. Finally, the refactoring process can start in order to mitigate the pressing issues.
At Qafoo, we helped some of our customers to go that way safely and supported them on their journey back into productivity. Benjamin and Kore have created a talk that structures the problems that commonly exist in legacy code and gives you an overview on how to approach mitigating them. They first presented that talk a week ago at FrOSCon
They will give another instance of Escaping the Legacy Hell at the International PHP Conference in Munich on October 28th. In addition to that, Benjamin and Kore will hold a workshop that focuses on Refactoring Legacy Code there on October 27th. If you want to kickstart working on the legacy state of your code, don't miss these!