Last week I delivered my “Technology and Psychology of Refactoring” talk at the Accelerated Software Exchange Forum. I have to say, I’m continuously impressed at the way that tech organizations are raising the bar on the quality and interactivity of remote events in light of…well…the unfortunate necessity that we stay isolated from one another until this pandemic ends.
One oddity of the remote conference beat is that, once you have a good recording of a talk, you can scale the talk faster by sending it to other conferences. This talk I did live, but the material itself has not changed much from the original version I gave at PearConf. That said, we did do a live Q&A, and I got a recording of that for those of you who loved the original talk.
Here is the original talk, for reference:
In this talk, I answer questions like:
- What does it mean for code to be maintainable, and how do we make code more maintainable?
- How do we know when to refactor—and how do we know when to stop refactoring?
- How do we sell stakeholders on giving us space to make a large refactor?
The talk includes both code samples and architecture samples from apps in use today. Full transcript and slides are available right here, in case you’d like to read along.
And here is the Q&A from the ASXF.
All my gratitude to Chris (the host) and the SkillsMatter staff for facilitating this and getting a recording for y’all!
Questions with timestamps in the video description. That said, here’s the outline:
- 0:50 – “Too much time is spent on requirements gathering.” True or false?
- 4:41 – When does a refactor get so big that it essentially becomes a rewrite, and is that a danger sign of some kind?
- 9:33 – Can you use the idea of expected cost of maintaining software as a metric to advocate for the reduction of technical debt?
- 13:36 – Any further advice on selling the business on overall refactoring efforts?
Please enjoy!
If you liked this piece, you might also like:
The rest of the talks category (I’m working on getting it up-to-date)
In particular, this talk on Leveling Up also has Q&A!
This AMA, I guess, if you just really love witnessing me answer questions off the cuff for some reason