Format: talk/lecture
Duration: 30 minutes
Abstract
Bob Martin recently published a book called "Clean Code", in which he writes "Consider this book a description of the 'Object Mentor School of Clean Code'". Perhaps, like me, you have wondered about what other schools of coding practice there are? Whether there is a difference between clean code and beautiful code? I bet you haven't. I bet what you are wondering is whether this is remotely relevant to your daily business of producing working code in an acceptable timeframe. Your real worry is whether you'll be able to implement any functionality at all without screwing up and breaking something else!
The majority of software work involves maintaining and extending existing systems, very few of which are a joy to work with, and even fewer adhere to Bob Martin's style guide. My contention is that if legacy code is your reality, then code cleanliness should be top of your agenda.
In this talk I'll be looking at some concrete things you can do to improve the cleanliness of your code, both as an individual, and as a development team. Oh, and in case you were actually wondering, firstly, of course there is more than one school, and secondly, I think "beautiful" is optional, but "clean" shouldn't be.
Detailed description
I gave the first version of this presentation at Scandinavian Developers Conference in March 2009, and it seemed to be well received. So I hope the audience for Scan Agile would also like to hear it. The talk outline is roughly - why should I care about clean code, what is clean code, what do I do about legacy code, how can I improve my coding skills so I always write clean code. Some of the material is drawn from Bob Martin's book, complemented by my own experience.
Bio
Emily Bache is an experienced software developer and programming coach, with a preference for agile methods and Test Driven Development. Over the past decade Emily has worked in a variety of organizations from very small to very large, including many years at AstraZeneca. There she was responsible for the development of an award winning platform for computational chemistry. As well as speaking at international conferences such as XP2009, agile2008 and Scandinavian Developer Conference, Emily regularly leads Coder's Dojo sessions.
Comments (2)
Jul 30, 2009
Vasco Duarte says:
What do you expect people in the audience to get from this talk? To be aware of ...What do you expect people in the audience to get from this talk? To be aware of "clean code" concepts and guidelines? To learn some principles of clean code they can apply already the next day? Will they, after attending, be able to identify code smells easier?
Aug 04, 2009
Emily Bache says:
I expect people in the audience to come away with an awareness that clean code i...I expect people in the audience to come away with an awareness that clean code is important, and some things that they can do to improve the state of the code in their team. Some things to do themselves, things to say to their manager, to their teammates, and encouragement to start a coding dojo with their team. I don't show any actual code or smells.