Upgrade to Pro
— share decks privately, control downloads, hide ads and more …
Speaker Deck
Features
Speaker Deck
PRO
Sign in
Sign up for free
Search
Search
The Joys and Pains of Working with an Old Codebase
Search
Gordon Diggs
May 17, 2014
Programming
1
2.3k
The Joys and Pains of Working with an Old Codebase
Gordon Diggs
May 17, 2014
Tweet
Share
More Decks by Gordon Diggs
See All by Gordon Diggs
John Coltrane: Lessons in Leadership
gordondiggs
2
280
The Customer Gap
gordondiggs
1
110
Picking Records with JavaScript and a Button
gordondiggs
0
77
Kafka Partitioning Algorithm
gordondiggs
0
140
Supbutton
gordondiggs
0
61
Rayons
gordondiggs
0
63
Sous Vide
gordondiggs
0
81
Dev Events & Internal Tools at Paperless Post
gordondiggs
0
120
The Joys and Pains of Working With an Old Codebase
gordondiggs
0
130
Other Decks in Programming
See All in Programming
pnpm に provenance のダウングレード を検出する PR を出してみた
ryo_manba
1
170
React Nativeならぬ"Vue Native"が実現するかも?_新世代マルチプラットフォーム開発フレームワークのLynxとLynxのVue.js対応を追ってみよう_Vue Lynx
yut0naga1_fa
2
2k
ビルドプロセスをデバッグしよう!
yt8492
0
200
NIKKEI Tech Talk#38
cipepser
0
350
AIと人間の共創開発!OSSで試行錯誤した開発スタイル
mae616
2
860
Go言語はstack overflowの夢を見るか?
logica0419
1
680
Towards Transactional Buffering of CDC Events @ Flink Forward 2025 Barcelona Spain
hpgrahsl
0
120
Amazon ECS Managed Instances が リリースされた!キャッチアップしよう!! / Let's catch up Amazon ECS Managed Instances
cocoeyes02
0
120
kiroとCodexで最高のSpec駆動開発を!!数時間で web3ネイティブなミニゲームを作ってみたよ!
mashharuki
0
1k
Blazing Fast UI Development with Compose Hot Reload (droidcon London 2025)
zsmb
0
440
Webサーバーサイド言語としてのRustについて
kouyuume
1
5k
Dive into Triton Internals
appleparan
0
390
Featured
See All Featured
Sharpening the Axe: The Primacy of Toolmaking
bcantrill
46
2.5k
Reflections from 52 weeks, 52 projects
jeffersonlam
355
21k
Code Reviewing Like a Champion
maltzj
526
40k
Principles of Awesome APIs and How to Build Them.
keavy
127
17k
RailsConf 2023
tenderlove
30
1.3k
Being A Developer After 40
akosma
91
590k
How to Think Like a Performance Engineer
csswizardry
27
2.2k
[RailsConf 2023 Opening Keynote] The Magic of Rails
eileencodes
31
9.7k
A Modern Web Designer's Workflow
chriscoyier
697
190k
Optimizing for Happiness
mojombo
379
70k
It's Worth the Effort
3n
187
28k
Building Applications with DynamoDB
mza
96
6.7k
Transcript
The Joys and Pains of Working With An Old Codebase
Gordon Diggs BACON 2014
The Joys and Pains of Working With An Old Codebase
Gordon Diggs BACON 2014
if total_guests == 150 && total_guests + 1 == 151
... end
Outline About Me Introduction to our codebase Adding features Executing
refactors Tools we use The joys
@gordondiggs Record Collector
@gordondiggs Baker / Cook
@gordondiggs Baker / Cook #devslovebaking
@gordondiggs New York City Resident
None
"I have always found that plans are useless but planning
is indispensable." - Dwight D. Eisenhower
The Codebase Ruby 2.1 Rails 2.3 Postgres, Redis, Memcached Started
in 2008 60 contributors ~128k lines of application code
#TODO: redo this
How to add features
1. Plan out the feature
1. Plan out the feature Have developers involved in the
planning
1. Plan out the feature Have developers involved in the
planning ! Let your unique development concerns be known
1. Plan out the feature Have developers involved in the
planning ! Let your unique development concerns be known ! Make it a conversation
2. Do a technical kick-off
2. Do a technical kick-off What new data models do
we need? ! What needs to be refactored? ! What might the challenges be?
3. Be prepared to do something else entirely
4. Write lots of tests, especially for things that already
exist
5. Document Things
Build awesome things
# because the "update_attributes!" does not behave as expected, we
need this def update_attributes_is_broken_with_nested_attribute_validations_in_rails ... end
How to execute refactors
Treat them like features
1. Plan out the refactor
2. Do a technical kick-off
3. Write lots of tests, especially for things that already
exist
4. Document Things
Build awesome things
Tools we use (and love)
None
None
None
None
None
None
None
None
Peter Welch - Programming Sucks stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks
The Joys
Get to fix lots of bugs
Get to fix lots of interesting bugs
Give time to fix the bugs
Treat your codebase like a campsite
Build awesome things
Thank you! @gordondiggs Special Thanks to: Mike Bernstein, Michael Hansen,
Solomon Kahn, Alan Macdougall, Aaron Quint, Todd Mazierski, Justin Searls, Stephanie Shih, Alyssa Stein