Agile Software Development: Refactoring

Course details

Refactoring code is a key responsibility of software developers. It helps you develop quality code—the foundation you need to react quickly to change, add new features, and ship high-performance products. This course teaches the basics of refactoring, tailored for agile development. Instructor Richard Kasperowski helps you set up a test-driven development environment and walks through basic refactoring techniques: the rename variable, extract, and inline methods. In chapter two, he explains how to stabilize legacy code with outstanding technical debt—inefficiencies and errors introduced as the result of careless programming. Then he uses refactoring to simplify code, remove duplication, and build more reusable objects. Finally, he shows how refactoring complements an agile workflow, by demonstrating how to quickly add a new feature to the simplified codebase.

Learning objectives
Defining refactoring
Setting up a test-driven development environment
Renaming variables
Using the extract method
Pinning down legacy code
Testing code and branch coverage
Refactoring legacy code
Simplifying math and Booleans
Adding new behaviors to refactored code

Concepts

0. Introduction

01 - Refactoring for better code
02 - What you need to know

1. Refactoring with New Code

03 - What is refactoring
04 - Test-driven development (TDD)
05 - Code kata
06 - Setting up the new code kata
07 - Setting up the TDD environment
08 - Refactoring - Rename Variable
09 - Micro-refactoring
10 - Refactoring - Inline Code
11 - Code kata - Continue solving the problem
12 - Refactoring - Extract Method

2. Stabilizing Legacy Code

13 - Technical debt - Why it s a problem
14 - Setting up the legacy code kata
15 - Methodology
16 - Start writing pin-down tests
17 - Complete writing pin-down tests
18 - Refactoring pin-down tests
19 - Refactoring - Change Signature
20 - Code coverage
21 - Branch coverage

3. Refactoring Legacy Code

22 - Refactoring - Extract Constant strings
23 - Refactoring - Extract Constant numbers
24 - Refactoring - Extract Variable Extract Method
25 - Refactoring - Simplify Arithmetic
26 - Refactoring - Simplify Booleans
27 - Refactoring - Group-Related Logic
28 - Refactoring - Final steps
29 - Add new behavior to refactored code

Conclusion

30 - Next steps