Legacy Code - The SAS Workshops Blog

Approval Testing For LabVIEW 2.0 Released

If you haven't tried approval testing yet, you definitely should. It makes unit testing a lot easier, particularly for legacy code or for verifying complicated objects.

Book Reviews , Coding Philosophy , Legacy Code

The Best Book on Legacy Code I've Read Yet

You have inherited a Legacy System, what do you do now? How do you manage a successful modernization effort?

A screenshot showing a Git Bash Window. The command is`g-cli blue -- .` The output is "5 Files Processed 2 Formatted"

Software Engineering , Software tools , Legacy Code , Resources , Announcements

Announcing the Blue Formatter for LabVIEW

If you like Nattify, you'll probably like this tool. It lets you run Nattify on an entire directory from the command line.

Unit Testing , Legacy Code , Software tools

Approval Tests

Unit testing for legacy code can be really hard. Approval testing can make it easier.

Coding Philosophy , Design Patterns , OOP , Legacy Code

Can Your Code Be Too SOLID?

You can have too much of a good thing. Lots of code is hard to read because it uses too many unnecessary abstractions.

Coding Philosophy , Legacy Code

Don't rewrite, reimagine

If you are going to go down the path of a rewrite, don't just recreate what is there. Reimagine what is possible given what you know now.

Legacy Code , Coding Philosophy

Thoughts On Technical Debt

What does the phrase "technical debt" mean to you? How do you deal with it?

Coding Philosophy , Legacy Code

Thoughts On Rewrite Vs Refactor

Rewrite or Refactor? Every developer has faced that choice. What should you consider in making your decision?

Interviews , Coding Philosophy , Legacy Code

I was recently interviewed by Scott and Andrea of Legacy Code Rocks. We had a really great conversation about software engineering and dealing with legacy code. We hit on some important topics. It is worth taking a listen.

Coding Philosophy , Legacy Code

Fixing Legacy Code: Missing The Forest For The Trees

Sometimes I wonder if we are missing the point by fixing legacy code. It’s not that we shouldn’t fix bad code when we encounter it, but it’s more a feeling of we’re missing an important opportunity. Let’s start with something that you may be familiar

Book Reviews , Legacy Code

Working Effectively With Legacy Code

Several people have recommended this book to me over the years. I only recently got around to reading it. Software developers continue to recommend this 15-year-old book for good reason. It is quite useful because we all encounter legacy code and all of its techniques are still highly relevant. Thesis

Book Reviews , Legacy Code

Legacy Code First Aid Kit

In general I hate digital only books. I much prefer physical books, but this one, like Dive into Design Patterns is worth making an exception for. Nicolas did a great job with this book. It covers 14 different tools to help get you started working with legacy code. If you

Kata , Legacy Code

Yahtzee Kata

The Yahtzee Kata is a common refactoring kata. You can see a version of it on Emily Bauche’s Github. As a refactoring kata, it requires some starting code. Emily’s page contains starting code for a lot of languages, but not LabVIEW. So I took it upon myself to

How to , Continuous Integration , Legacy Code

Quick VI Analyzer

I haven’t talked a whole lot about VI Analyzer yet. It’s a static code analysis tool. If you come from text-based background, it is similar to a linter. It checks your code against a set of predefined rules and reports back any violations. You do need LabVIEW professional