Wrangling Your Untested Legacy Code: A Hands-On Workshop

Although most agile developers would prefer to use Test-Driven Development (TDD) on everything, their products or systems usually contain existing untested "legacy" code which resists and stifles good TDD practices. Untested code is easily broken and can hide those defects for months. Even with TDD, a developer adding new behaviors to legacy code can quickly run into problems when that untested code must change. Characterization Testing (i.e., testing existing behaviors) is the ancillary technique that allows teams to strengthen their safety net of fast, automated tests. But adding tests to existing code is also no picnic, as code written without tests has many ways of resisting automated testing. How do we proceed? The solution to this dilemma lies in simple, pragmatic techniques for teasing apart the big code hairball into more manageable strands. Rob Myers shows how to get critical areas protected with automated tests. He introduces guidelines for deciding which code to first wrestle into submission, offers a simple three-question preparatory exercise, and demonstrates precise tactical refactorings and testing “tricks.” Join this hands-on session to experiment with these techniques on a small but challenging blob of untested code (your choice of C#, Java, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, or VB.Net).

*Laptop Required. Delegates should have strong programming skills and be familiar with object-oriented language and programming techniques. Delegates should bring a laptop installed with their favorite programming language, IDE, and unit-testing framework and may want to download the matching “labs” repository from https://github.com/search?q=user%3AAgileInstitute+labs-.