Code smells & Refactoring

In order to maintain development speed and quality in a growing software product, it is important to keep the design in good order. The goal of this one-day training is to give you insight into the cause and consequences of a poorly maintainable design, recognising patterns that can lead to this and how to do something about it.

The training starts with the consequences when the design is not continuously maintained, showing signs of technical debt and code rot. Most of the day will be spent on recognising patterns in code that can hinder development speed and quality, the so-called ‘code smells’. The participants will then set to work on refactoring a few smells. The focus will be on making small, structured steps without changing the behaviour of the application and the importance of unit testing.

The training Code Smells & Refactoring is practical in nature, with many small code examples and practical assignments.

Topics

• Introduction to ‘software rot’, ‘technical debt’, and ‘code smells’
• How refactoring works
• How to do Test-driven development
• Code smells categories: bloaters, OO abusers, change preventers, dispensables, couplers, etc.

Knowledge

Basic programming skills (e.g. in C++, C#). It is assumed that the participants are familiar with OO concepts and with UML class diagrams. For this training to be successful, a few years of experience with OO code is recommended.

Preparation

For this training, a laptop is required.

Duration and number of participants 

The training takes one day and has a maximum of 10 participants.