Working Effectively with Legacy Code

I recently read Working Effectively with Legacy Code .

It was an excellent book. It focus on legacy code, defined as code that doesn't use unit testing - yes, it is a narrow definition :-) .

It has an excellent range of techniques for refactoring and getting older code under test, as well as adding features without breaking anything. If you have an older program that you are moving under a testing framework, the insights on the book are well worth the price.

In particular, the various ways to get objects decoupled so that you can get them tested without creating a lot of support code are very useful.

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