Tidy First?

A Personal Exercise in Empirical Software Design

by Kent Beck

English language

Published Oct. 28, 2023 by O'Reilly Media, Incorporated.

ISBN:: 978-1-0981-5124-9
Goodreads:: 171691901

Messy code is a nuisance. "Tidying" code, to make it more readable, requires breaking it up into manageable sections. In this practical guide, author Kent Beck, creator of Extreme Programming and pioneer of software patterns, suggests when and where you might apply tidyings to improve your code while keeping the overall structure of the system in mind.

Instead of trying to master tidying all at once, this book lets you try out a few examples that make sense for your problem. If you have a big function containing many lines of code, you'll learn how to logically divide it into smaller chunks. Along the way, you'll learn the theory behind software design: coupling, cohesion, discounted cash flows, and optionality.

This book helps you:

Understand the basic theory of how software design works and the forces that act on it
Explore the difference between changes to …

This book helps you:

Understand the basic theory of how software design works and the forces that act on it
Explore the difference between changes to a system's behavior and changes to its structure
Improve your programming experience by sometimes tidying first and sometimes tidying after
Learn how to make large changes in small, safe steps
Approach software design as an exercise in human relationships

3 editions

matthewmincher reviewed Tidy First? by Kent Beck

Terse

4 stars

I really liked the format of this book. The nature of a light overview of approaches to improve code quality means it's hard to appeal to everyone.

Approaches are often either obvious and day to day, or too complex, depending on your current position and project.

In this book, each chapter is only really a page or two (it was originally a web series) and it's super easy to absorb something you're interested in, or skip over something less appropriate.

I enjoyed sections on when not to tidy, and how to justify tidying as valuable to the business you're working with.

I really liked the format of this book. The nature of a light overview of approaches to improve code quality means it's hard to appeal to everyone.

Approaches are often either obvious and day to day, or too complex, depending on your current position and project.

In this book, each chapter is only really a page or two (it was originally a web series) and it's super easy to absorb something you're interested in, or skip over something less appropriate.

I enjoyed sections on when not to tidy, and how to justify tidying as valuable to the business you're working with.

Sergey Machulskis reviewed Tidy First? by Kent Beck

Review of 'Tidy First?' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Chapters on on cohesion and Constantine's equivalence (chapters 29-31) have good ideas, the rest is a waste of time.

Boggin reviewed Tidy First? by Kent Beck

Upgrade your programming technique

5 stars

Easily digestible short chapters that remind you of simple things you should be considering each time you touch code.

What Kent Beck is saying seems obvious but perhaps that's because he explains his views so well. I think this could turn any programmer on to writing better, simpler code.

Easily digestible short chapters that remind you of simple things you should be considering each time you touch code.

What Kent Beck is saying seems obvious but perhaps that's because he explains his views so well. I think this could turn any programmer on to writing better, simpler code.

Bodo reviewed Tidy First? by Kent Beck

Two books for one, one better than the other

4 stars

This is hard...not sure how to rate this one. The first half is a 13/10, it gives words to things that I do based on intuition. Which is the most valuable kind of book for experienced developers. The second part somehow feels off. It tries to add a business case to the first half of the book. But fails to explain it to people who don't have some form of business background. I heard the feedback from two other developers that they didn't get that part at all. Which is sad because if they had, it would have made the book even more valuable for them. I think Kent might need to revisit that part with some feedback from readers and can make it work. There is value in those chapters. It just needs a bit of tidying up.