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Questions tagged [legacy-code]

Originally legacy code meant code 'inherited' from authors or from a previous program/system version. Since Michael Feathers published his "Working Effectively with Legacy Code" book, new definition came to be, where code without tests is legacy code.

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Best way to analyse a large class before refactoring it into smaller classes?

Foreword I'm not looking for a way to refactor a large spaghetti code class, that topic has been covered in other questions. Question I'm looking for techniques to begin to understand a class file ...
sydan's user avatar
  • 373
5 votes
3 answers
1k views

How to solve the Lava flow anti-pattern?

In this blog post, the author describes an anti-pattern called the "lava flow" In a nutshell, the lava flow anti-pattern happens when many programmers lead the development of an application, each of ...
Antoine Catton's user avatar
0 votes
2 answers
490 views

How to add cases to large legacy code base project? [duplicate]

There is a legacy project full of C++ code. As a MFC GUI project, it contains lots of businesses logic out of control and beyond average level programmer to understand. To work on such GUI project, is ...
upton's user avatar
  • 673
1 vote
0 answers
74 views

Is this pattern of optional dependency injection sound? [duplicate]

A lot of the time when working on legacy code bases, I find it hard to move manually created dependencies to the constructor parameters, because of a variety of reasons. Sometimes it's because the ...
maxiscool's user avatar
  • 111
3 votes
1 answer
864 views

Help Improve DB model/strategy, for use in refactoring SQL-ridden legacy code

Question: Which design pattern do I use to help me refactor legacy SQL code into separate classes? Goal Bring in concepts of data separation and database separation and also latest modern ...
Dennis's user avatar
  • 8,257
2 votes
3 answers
2k views

Refactoring web pages with user controls

Is it good design to use many user controls to help refactor a web application? In my case, it's a VB.NET Webforms ASP.NET website. All our pages are organized into sections that, while related and ...
Jeremy K's user avatar
  • 121
2 votes
4 answers
778 views

How to refactor a myriad of similar classes

I'm faced with similar classes A1, A2, ..., A100. Believe it or not but yeah, there are roughly hundred classes that almost look the same. None of these classes are unit tested (of course ;-) ). Each ...
TobiMcNamobi's user avatar
  • 1,171
1 vote
3 answers
238 views

Can I refactor "safely" without specs? [duplicate]

I have inherited a legacy web application many years which: Does not make use of Object Oriented principles, even though the language would permit it Has no unit tests, nor any sort of test suite, ...
leokhorn's user avatar
  • 624
28 votes
4 answers
4k views

What is the origin of the negative term "legacy code"

Everyone talks about legacy code in software development and I have heard the term over the last ten years used to paint any codebase as being bad. Where did this term, which has such powerful ...
stevebot's user avatar
  • 2,013
19 votes
5 answers
15k views

How to avoid excessive method overloading?

We have quite a lot of places in the source code of our application , where one class has many methods with same names and different parameters. Those methods always have all the parameters of a '...
Ytus's user avatar
  • 301
15 votes
5 answers
6k views

Why write tests for code that I will refactor?

I am refactoring a huge legacy code class. Refactoring (I presume) advocates this: write tests for the legacy class refactor the heck out of the class Problem: once I refactor the class, my tests ...
Dennis's user avatar
  • 8,257
28 votes
2 answers
3k views

Is there a named anti pattern for historically grown software? [closed]

Is there an anti pattern that describes a historically grown software system where multiple developers just added new features to the system but no one really kept an eye on the overall architecture ...
Jens's user avatar
  • 391
2 votes
2 answers
659 views

Testing a very specific function in a large, complex application

I'm new to testing but wholeheartedly realize how important it is. The main issue is that my company has no top-down support for testing at all. That is we don't have any unit testing and just a bit ...
ari gold's user avatar
  • 161
74 votes
10 answers
8k views

Does it make sense to write tests for legacy code when there is no time for a complete refactoring?

I usually try to follow the advice of the book Working Effectively with Legacy Code. I break dependencies, move parts of the code to @VisibleForTesting public static methods and to new classes to make ...
is4's user avatar
  • 779
3 votes
3 answers
3k views

Effective way to estimate dead code removal?

I've been working in an application with about 100k LOCs and basically We have been reworking features to comply with a new architecture based on a new technology stack. This work is almost finished ...
ElderMael's user avatar
  • 260
2 votes
1 answer
270 views

How to find classes that use certain DB tables

Problem: I'm asked to prepare a document where all our DB tables are listed and I'm supposed to list all Controllers that uses these DB tables for read and another list for Controllers that do write ...
Songo's user avatar
  • 6,663
18 votes
6 answers
4k views

Does dealing with legacy code help one evolve as a programmer? [closed]

I'm a Java developer with a bit more than a year of experience which places me somewhere above a junior, but not among mid-level developers yet. Recently I was offered a long-term project which is ...
svz's user avatar
  • 307
9 votes
4 answers
2k views

I have 200k lines of poorly designed code, will units tests or integration tests be more valuable? [duplicate]

I've inherited a lot of poorly designed code; the code has no tests. I am putting tests in place before I attempt a major refactor, but I have run into a problem with my unit tests. The problem is, I ...
Buttons840's user avatar
  • 1,876
7 votes
6 answers
2k views

Painfully Stupid Method Names in Legacy Code: Fix or Leave as Warning? [duplicate]

For this case let's assume something like... "removedNonPriceChangingConfermations" that is in no way relating to things that happened in the past tense, nor does it return a list of removed items (...
Erik  Reppen's user avatar
  • 6,251
3 votes
0 answers
50 views

How to document legacy code (shell scripts)? [duplicate]

I got involved into a project where we are taking over a bunch of legacy code. Code is basically shell scripts and PL/SQL packages/procedures/functions. There is no documentation how the code works ...
jrara's user avatar
  • 595
1 vote
4 answers
316 views

How Much Of A (Broken) Legacy Framework To Keep [duplicate]

I've inherited a hosted system (system "A") which can be used to manage products, inventory, and orders, and can send those products to various third-parties. Quite simply, system "A" doesn't work. ...
Code Slinger's user avatar
13 votes
5 answers
2k views

What to do as a Dev when for years their team has lacked product innovation, not used project mgmt methodologies, and kept bad Software Dev practices? [closed]

I am interested in knowing how to deal with a current software development process that has not been changed for years and will eventually lead to product and team failure. Yes, probably the easier ...
kami's user avatar
  • 157
351 votes
20 answers
80k views

How should I behave as a developer in a project that's headed for failure?

I am a developer in a 5-member team and I believe our project is headed for disaster. I'll describe why in a moment, but my question is: how should I behave? The deadline is in 1.5 months, and I ...
4 votes
4 answers
2k views

What can I do to maintain respect for a poorly written codebase? [duplicate]

In my job I have to maintain a poorly written codebase which is both hard to understand, has tons of comments that are just plain wrong, has a bunch of weird decisionmaking going on in it and a whole ...
Daniel Figueroa's user avatar
4 votes
5 answers
492 views

Keep coding the wrong way to remain consistent? [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: Code maintenance: keeping a bad pattern when extending new code for being consistent, or not? To keep things simple let's say I am responsible for maintaining two applications,...
bwalk2895's user avatar
  • 1,988
5 votes
4 answers
288 views

Version control implementation advice on legacy websites?

Assuming no experience with version control systems, just local to live web development. I've been dropped in on a few legacy website projects, and want an easier and more robust way to be able to ...
Eric's user avatar
  • 51
14 votes
11 answers
13k views

How to make Classic ASP interesting if you are stuck with it? [closed]

I used to work on a really small outsourcing company (4 programmers and the boss), then when the stress and the frequent long shifts made the situation unbearable I made the switch to a better paid ...
Saul Delgado's user avatar
5 votes
9 answers
647 views

Have you worked with poorly designed application? [closed]

I have been asked to work in a Java web application that is very very poorly designed. In the name of "making this easy", they have come up with their own "framework" to make things extremely ...
Vinoth Kumar C M's user avatar
7 votes
1 answer
730 views

Can Test-Driven development work in legacy projects?

So here is a question for you, having read some great answers to questions such as Test-Driven Development - Convince Me. So my question is: "Can Test-Driven Development be used effectively on non-...
JHarley1's user avatar
  • 701

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