Working Effectively with Legacy Code

by Michael C. Feathers

Could this patient’s major organs and viscera be better than they are? Yes. So do we just forget about his immediate problem, sew him up again, and tell him to eat right and train for a marathon? We could, but what we really need to do is take the patient as he is, fix what’s wrong, and move him to a healthier state.

The way to win is to concentrate effort on not putting bugs into code in the first place.

There were some other very good-looking areas of the code base, but there is something mesmerizing about large chunks of procedural code: They seem to beg for more.