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Last active August 29, 2015 13:57
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speaker.md

Kerri Miller

Contact details

Speaker bio

Kerri Miller is a Sr Software Developer and Team Lead based in the Pacific Northwest. She has worked at enterprise companies, international ad agencies, boutique consultancies, start-ups, and every place in between. She mentors and teaches students as an instructor at Ada Developers Academy, and consults with a wide range of companies internationally through NIRD. Having an insatiable curiosity, she has worked as a lighting designer, marionette puppeteer, sous chef, and professional poker player, and enjoys hiking, collecting Vespas, and working with glass.

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talk.md

Harry Potter and The Legacy Codebase

  • Desired talk duration: 30 minutes

Abstract

It's your first day at Hogwarts.com, and everything is wonderful and thrilling. You dig in to classes, and soon find a dusty book with a cryptic warning:

"Do NOT on any circumstances make ANY change to this magic incantation without talking to Doug first!!!"

Sound familiar? Approaching a legacy code base can feel like unraveling a mystery, not just about the code, but about the personalities who wrote it. What tools and techniques can help you solve the maze of twisty code? Let's explore how to get a handle on legacy code, how to negotiate joining an existing team of developers, and how we can get a summa cum laude at graduation.

Notes

I work with legacy code all day, everyday. As Ruby and Rails gets longer in the tooth, more of us each month are dealing not with greenfield, but brownfield development and maintenance work. Even if we once started a project fresh, maybe we're a couple years in and our team is growing.. well, all your new hires are dealing with legacy code, even if you're not! We want to help people understand the frustrations, pitfalls, and labyrinths that are common to working with legacy code, and give them the tools to tame it. After all, if software is essentially a people problem, isn't legacy software as well?

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