Llewellyn Falco

Practical Refactoring - Tiny Steps to Better Code

9:00 AM MDT

The goal: Clean Code That Works, and getting there is half the fun. Working with a legacy mess can be frustrating, boring, dangerous, and time-consuming. When FIBS occur (FIBs = Fixes that Introduce Bugs) you often enter an endless Test and Fix cycle that can quickly escalate into a nightmare. I've been there, you've been there. How do we return to pleasant dreams?

In this code-centric workshop we'll look at ways to introduce sanity and calmness into the process of maintaining and improving buggy, poorly written, poorly designed code. Few slides, mostly code. Learn how to turn any project around and have fun doing it.

Developing Design Sense for your Code

8:30 AM MDT

“In order to make delicious food…. you need to develop a palate capable of discerning good and bad. Without good taste,
you can't make good food.” - Jiro Ono (World’s Best Sushi Chef)

Many of us are stuck with messy code. We know it’s not great but it works and what can we do? Where and how do you start?

We are going to use some cutting edge training to train your pattern recognition section of your brain to instantly recognize common, reoccurring anti-pattern (smells) in your code.

Then we will learn very specific techniques to start improving on these specific smells.

Once you are trained to see these anti-patterns you’ll recognize them everywhere. Now that you are equipped to handle them your code will start to transform into something beautiful and easy to work with.

Cutting Code Quickly

10:30 AM MDT

In this guided demo, we are going to look at 3 different techniques that are remarkably powerful in combination to cut through legacy code without having to go through the bother of reading or understanding it.

The techniques are:

Combination Testing: to get 100% test coverage quickly

Code Coverage as guidance: to help us make decisions about inputs and deletion

Provable Refactorings: to help us change code without having to worry about it.

In combination, these 3 techniques can quickly make impossible tasks trivial.

Will will be doing this on the Gilded Rose Kata, https://github.com/emilybache/GildedRose-Refactoring-Kata

It is extra beneficial if you try it out yourself first so you can see how your implementation would differ.

Lightning Talks

8:30 PM MDT

Over the course of my life I have amassed a great quantity of 1-3 minute talks. Tonight we are going to Randomly pick from that list and see where the adventure takes us!

Talks:
Test Driven Math
10 X
A swimming pool isn’t just a bigger bathtub
Bdd vs TDD
Arlo’s Git Notation
The Curse of knowledge
Do NOT use the greater than sign in programming
DocDoD
Sparrows
Leveling up
On being the best
Quantum Computing
Theory Based thread testing
Better Lunches
Decision trees
Sustainable Pace
Standing alone
Better Interviews
Duplication and Cohesion
Generic Type Information at Runtime in Java
Make the easy change

Consume First Architecture

9:00 AM MDT

Let’s get back to basics.

One of the microskills often used in TDD is Consume First Architecture, which simply means using the fields and methods before they exist. Sounds easy? Well yes and no. Even simple lines of code can have HUGE implications on your architecture. The real skill in consume first is to be able to see, question and respond to those implications on sight.

In this lab, we are going to geek out over a single line of code. We will take it and turn it into 40-50 variations and explore how each variation impacts the resulting design.

Refactoring - Continuous Improvement of Your Code Base

11:00 AM MDT

This is a high level talk about many of the misconceptions surrounding refactoring, including
What refactoring looks like
Why refactoring is often neglected
The pace of change
Making better choices
The ROI on improvements

This talk is broken in 5 sections:

Evolutionary design
The most common misconception is that refactoring is a mini-rewrite of a section of code. Instead we are going to look into what microevolution looks and feels like. As well and the double edged sword as to why it is both extremely successful yet often unappreciated.

Code Smells
Using cutting edge pattern recognizing training we will show managers and programmers alike how to spot bad code at a glance

Naming

Explore Arlo Belshee 7 steps of improving the naming of your code.

10 X
The ROI (return on investment) is one of the most misunderstood part, because the math is very non-intuitive. Here we will explore why 8,402 is 10 times better than 8,333 ?!?