Monthly Archives: February 2019

Things move fast in the software development world. Technologies come and go faster than in most other industries. Programming languages tend to stay a little longer, but at a certain point in time, you might find yourself with a legacy programming language. How can you recognize this, and how should you react? What Is a Programming Language? Software is developed by writing code in a language that humans can understand. This code is then translated into instructions that the computer can understand. Like "normal" languages (e.g. English or French), a programming language evolves and has a community…

One aspect of legacy code that is often forgotten is security. Discussions about legacy code usually center around things like maintainability, testability, cost of development and cost of running. Not so much about the security implications. Yet it is becoming an increasingly important issue that companies shouldn't ignore. If you've missed my article on what legacy code is, let me briefly repeat the four points I made. Legacy code is code: with little automated testswith automated tests of bad qualitythat uses older technologythat is generally of bad quality making it hard for developers to change things without…

I've previously established that you need to automate your tests, even (especially!) in legacy projects. I've also covered on how to get your developers to write tests. But maybe you're wondering if you or some other non-technical person can help write the tests. Luckily, there is a way, and I would even recommend it highly. Types of Tests First, let's briefly cover the types of tests again. Broadly speaking, the following type of tests exist: unit tests: to quickly test small pieces of code in isolation, mainly for developersintegration tests: to test the integration between different pieces…

So you've acknowledged you're stuck with a piece of legacy code. One of the things that might be missing are automated tests. Is it possible to add tests to this application retroactively? That is, write tests for features that have already been implemented? Short answer: yes! Long answer: read on... The Situation There is a Chinese proverb: "The best moment to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best moment is now." Keep that in mind as we look at the current situation. Let's say your application has little to no automated tests. I've already…