Articles tagged “eat your vegetables”

  1. Delete Your Dead Code!

    A few days ago, Ned Batchelder's post on deleting code made the rounds on HN, even though it was originally written in 2002. Here I want to echo a few of Ned's points, and take a stronger stance than he did: delete code as soon as you know you don't need it any more, no questions asked. I'll also offer some tips from the trenches for how to identify candidate dead code.

    This is the second in an ongoing series on eating your vegetables in software engineering, on good, healthy practices for a happy and successful codebase. I don't (yet) know how long the series will be, so please stay tuned!

  2. Good Test, Bad Test

    A good test suite is a developer's best friend -- it tells you what your code does and what it's supposed to do. It's your second set of eyes as you're working, and your safety net before you go to production.

    By contrast, a bad test suite stands in the way of progress -- whenever you make a small change, suddenly fifty tests are failing, and it's not clear how or why the cases are related to your change.

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