Programming Without Fear: Best Practices for New and Existing Software

Programming Without Fear

Best Practices for New and Existing Software

Seminar presented by the Greater Boston Chapter of the ACM

Writing new code is one of the joys of programming. Modifying existing code is often one of the nightmares of programming. Unfortunately, you will spend more time modifying existing code than writing new code.

Modifying existing code often results in Whac-A-Mole Programming - you make a change in one part of the code, and a problem crops up in another place. You fix that problem and two more pop up. You quickly find yourself trapped in debug hell!

There is a better way - a sane approach to dealing with both new code and legacy code. A framework for bringing order to code chaos, for making changes to existing code that are actually improvements. And this seminar provides a powerful approach to developing and modifying code.

In this seminar you will learn reliable, sustainable and enjoyable software development practices which you can immediately put to use. These techniques, first popularized in Extreme Programming (XP), have been proven, refined and extended for more than a decade. By using them you will produce working code faster, increase its quality, and reduce technical debt — the demon that snarls later development.

Presented by Gil Broza of 3PVantage, this seminar covers key areas including Code Smells, Refactoring, Microtesting, Test-Driven Development, Dependencies, and Test Smells. You will move from hacking at code - perhaps creating more problems than you solve - to code craftsmanship.

When: November 13-14, 2010
Where: MIT Building E51
Cambridge, MA

Price: $495 through October 13, $545 through October 31

Details: www.gbcacm.org