Improving Old Codebases

Only some applications are pleasant to work on, especially those that are difficult to change.

Confident designers take the ambiguity of an object’s class. Objects in a system can be composed in different ways depending on the context. When working on a code base, time is often limited due to management and company demand to deliver features and solve customer problems. To improve an old code base, it’s essential to identify affected areas and have specific strategies for dealing with Technical Debt.

Premature decisions about application structure should be avoided.

Decisions should be made based on business relevance. Good design techniques, not personal preference, should be used. When designing software, it’s essential to listen to feedback.

Friction is an excellent indicator that improvements need to be made.

If a design is causing difficulties for the development team, it’s trying to tell you something important is missing. There are many signs that a design may need to be more flexible, but the most practical and obvious is the difficulty of testing an object. This is often a sign of coupling.

Remain open to design insights during the coding process.

[¹]: Practical Object-Oriented Design: An Agile Primer Using Ruby