Monthly Archives: August 2010

Legacy Code Change – a Boy Scout Adds Tests

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Here is a legacy code change policy for a team adopting TDD that has a legacy code base:

  • Test-drive new code
  • Add tests to legacy code before modification
  • Test-drive changes to legacy code

Refactoring without tests is dangerous; with all the details we must keep straight, a mistake is easy to make. How many code reviews have you been in where the recommended design changes are not made because “we already tested it”? You avoid the change because it’s dangerous to change code without tests. So, the Boy Scout adds tests too. For more on Boy Scouts, see previous post.

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Boy Scout Rule Applied to Every Day Coding

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The Boy Scouts have a rule: leave the camp cleaner than you found it. This does not mean that all the trash has to be cleaned up now, but you can’t let it get worse, and it must get at least a little better. In Bob Martin’s book, Clean Code, he asks, “What if code got a little better every time you change it?” I’ll answer it: the industry would not find itself in the mess it’s in. The industry norm is for code to incrementally worsen with each change.

Much of the time, following the Boy Scout Rule won’t be hard. It’s an incremental strategy. It’s easy to start and easy to sustain. Here are some typical challenges and ideas on how to be a Boy Scout.

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