Chapter 10. Working with legacy code

This chapter covers

  • Examining common problems with legacy code
  • Deciding where to begin writing tests
  • Surveying helpful tools for working with legacy code

I once consulted for a large development shop that produced billing software. They had over 10,000 developers and mixed .NET, Java, and C++ in products, subproducts, and intertwined projects. The software had existed in one form or another for over five years, and most of the developers were tasked with maintaining and building on top of existing functionality.

My job was to help several divisions (using all languages) learn TDD techniques. For about 90% of the developers I worked with, this never became a reality for several reasons, some of which were ...

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