Managing Object Ownership
Managing the lifetime of dynamically allocated memory and the objects residing in it is one of the challenges that can be hard to do right. It is usually handled by assigning […]
Refactoring
The Perfect Code
A few days ago I came across a tweet in my twitter timeline that made me think and spawned a little discussion: @diegorlosada Programming is one of the few fields […]
Evolving a Framework
We use frameworks all the time. Some are part of third party libraries, others are self made. What options do we have if requirements change, especially for the custom frameworks?
Making Yourself at Home in Legacy Code, Part 3: Getting the Team on Board
I have written about small changes and big refactorings in legacy code. But before one starts changing everything in a legacy code base there is one important hurdle to take: The […]
Making Yourself at Home in Legacy Code, Part 2: Refactoring
In the last post I started this mini-series about what you can do if you are thrown at a legacy code base. I wrote about not rushing in, about not […]
Making Yourself at Home in Legacy Code, Part 1: Options
Have you ever come across a legacy code base with dark and dusty corners that have been untouched for years? Many of us have, because green field development of shiny new applications […]
Plain Pointers as Function Parameters
In many legacy code bases we encounter functions that get their parameters passed by plain pointers. Often those pointers are expected to be not null. In this post I am […]
Over-generalization
Sometimes when I factor out a function, I see a more general algorithm hidden in that function. And then I get carried away generalizing it more and more.