Llewellyn Falco

Practical Refactoring - Tiny Steps to Better Code

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?

Mob Exploratory Testing Workshop

“All the brilliant people, working on the same thing, at the same time, in the same space, and at the same computer.“ - that is Mob Programming. When the activity we mob on is exploratory testing, or the viewpoint to being a programming mob is that of an exploratory tester, we call it Mob Testing. Mob testing - a group testing activity utilizing one computer - voices out the tacit knowledge in the group of individuals on shared tasks. Facilitated by an expert, it makes a great mechanism for building habits and transferring skills over passing knowledge.

Hands-on: Let's save some Legacy Code

Like everyone else, you have a large product that is hard to work with. We're going to change that in 75 minutes. Together we will save some gnarly legacy code (one thousand-line function). We will start with something hard to read, untested, and possibly buggy. We will finish with code that is stupidly easy to modify. You'll learn 6 trivial techniques that you can apply over and over to fix 95% of the messiest code you have. You can take home this exercise to help the rest of your team learn these techniques. You'll also learn how your team can teach itself a bunch more techniques to handle the other 5%.

We are going to save some legacy code. In 90 minutes. While adding features. We will mob program; you will save this legacy code. We won't introduce any bugs along the way. We will spend the time that you would normally use reading code to instead make it readable. You can apply these techniques and reduce the cost of coding within 48 hours of getting home.
We have done this exercise with dozens of teams. They code differently now. Changing existing code is actually safer and cheaper than writing new code. Their designs get a little better each day. This session will improve your code and show you what skills to learn to gain further improvements.

Developing Design Sense for your Code

“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?