Abstract: We begin with a story - a story about a legendary monster (15,000+ line class) I recently engaged in mortal combat. No spoilers. It wasn't pretty, but here I stand to tell the tale, at the ready to enter the fray once again.
Throughout our campaign we’ll take a few side quests and journeys into the three realms of technical debt:
- The alignments - OR - what mindsets help when battling demonic code versus forming a party?
- The armory - OR - what weapons are available to you? When do you brandish them?
- The lore and landscape - OR - Where did these damned dragons come from in the first place?
This talk employs a nerdy, fantastical, and fun system metaphor to help us escape the confines of the dominant mental model for legacy code: technical debt. All tools and tactics presented are based on experience, not fantasy. While there will be images of Cthulhu, Chromatic Dragons, and Vampyres, attendees should expect code examples, hands-on exercises, technical deep dives and practical lessons learned.
Learning Outcomes: - Acquire experience with a toolkit for assessing legacy code qualitatively and quantitatively.
- Learn how to visualize code quality and effect of team practices (such as collective ownership) on quality.
- Learn how to engage your team its leadership in making choices about which code to invest in.
- Understand dynamics and relationship of valuing delivery over valuing quality and vice versa.
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