English language
Published Oct. 28, 2023 by O'Reilly Media, Incorporated.
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:
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:
Chapters on on cohesion and Constantine's equivalence (chapters 29-31) have good ideas, the rest is a waste of time.
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.
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.
Purchasable
https://www.ebooks.com/en-de/book/211127822/tidy-first/kent-beck/.