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Where does all the bad code come from?

Some of the top people in the software field spend a good deal of their time examining and improving the quality of existing code bases, and showing developers how to keep their code bases habitable.

Brian Marick kindly filled in a historical gap for me in response to the initial version of this post. He writes: “‘habitability’ was probably coined by Richard P. Gabriel in an article for Journal of Object-Oriented Programming. The article (‘Habitability and Piecemeal Growth’) is included in his 1996 book Patterns of Software (available at https://dreamsongs.com/Books.html). Thanks for the history lesson, Brian!

It’s worth noting that “legacy” doesn’t automatically mean “bad”. Code that is currently used by numerous people, companies, and government agencies to support activities that are important to them clearly brings value. That value is part of the legacy of the code. But we need a shorthand way to categorize code whose internal design could benefit from improvement, and the word “legacy” has penetrated the market in that sense.

One might expect that after all these years of harping on “code quality” and “clean code” and “software design principles” that the problem of poorly-designed code would have faded into the background by 2020. Sadly, the problem is more profound than ever.

Why might that be the case? I think there are four main reasons.

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Refactor Anyway

Have you heard or read statements like the following?

  • “Tests are the wall at your back. You gotta have tests or you don’t know what you’re doing.” ( Sandi Metz video; time index 9:35)
  • “Not using an IDE with refactor tools like the ones discussed above is a waste of time.” ( Brian Ambielli)

I’ve seen a lot of people paralyzed by this advice. But why? It’s good advice, after all.

I think the problem is advice like this assumes the listener has a certain understanding of what software development work entails, and an ability to synthesize information and apply new techniques in context and with the benefit of substantial experience that includes particular activities and skills.

Absent those conditions, advice like this can scare people. They assume they literally cannot or must not attempt to refactor code unless the code is already well covered by a comprehensive and meaningful suite of executable checks, and they have the privilege of using very specific tools that verify the refactoring is completed safely.
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