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Legacy Code Rocks

Legacy Code Rocks explores the world of modernizing existing software applications. Hosts Andrea Goulet and M. Scott Ford of Corgibytes are out to change the way you think about legacy code. If you’re like a lot of people, when you hear the words “legacy code” it conjures up images of big mainframes and archaic punch card machines. While that’s true — it only tells a small part of the story. The truth is, the code you leave behind is your legacy, so let's make it a good one.
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Now displaying: 2019
Dec 29, 2019

Imagine if you could automatically follow, measure, and analyze your workflow, identify the sticking points, and remove them based on the coldblooded data. Imagine if there was such a thing as a Moneyball of coding. Today we talk with Arty Starr about the Idea Flow - a data-driven approach to measuring friction in developer's experience. Arty is the author of the Idea Flow, a panelist on the Greater Than Code podcast and a social entrepreneur. We talk about the eight most common friction points in coding and how the Idea Flow helps identify and eliminate them. When you finish listening to the episode, make sure to subscribe to Arty's newsletter at http://arty.twilightcircuit.io

Mentioned in this episode:

Arty on Twitter: https://twitter.com/janellekz?lang=en

Janelle Arty Starr, Idea Flow: How to Measure the PAIN in Software Development, at https://leanpub.com/ideaflow 

Arty’s newsletter: https://arty.twilightcircuit.io 

Greater than Code podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/greater-than-code/id1163023878



Dec 16, 2019

If you want your journey to be speedy and painless, it helps to know where you are going. Today we are talking with Sabrina Leandro, the principal software engineer at Intercom and a former VP of tech at Songkick. Sabrina is a technical leader with vast experience in product development processes, systems design, and management. We talk about incremental code rewriting and how to do it most efficiently. When you finish listening to the episode, visit Sabrina's website and take a listen to one of her talks



Dec 2, 2019

Practice leads to perfection. Having fun while doing it can only make you wish to practice more! Today we talk with Emily Bache, a software developer and a technical agile coach at ProAgile. Emily is well known as a maintainer of an outstanding code kata Gilded Rose and as an author of several books, including The Coding Dojo Handbook and Technical Agile Coaching. Emily explains the concepts of code katas and dojos and reveals the secrets of their effectiveness. When you finish listening to the episode, make sure to visit Emily's blog Coding Is Like Cooking



Nov 18, 2019

Creating an inclusive workplace culture in which all employees are thriving, the results are soaring, and the defections are non-existent is the goal of every company. One secret to creating this kind of workplace is allyship. Today we talk with Karen Catlin about everyday actions that help in building an inclusive and engaging workplace. Karen is the author of Better Allies, a leadership coach, keynote speaker, passionate advocate for inclusive workplaces and the former vice president of engineering at Macromedia and Adobe. When you finish listening to the episode, make sure to visit the Better Allies website and Twitter handle, check out Karen's website and take a look at her other book: Present! A Techie's Guide to Public Speaking. 



Nov 4, 2019

Streamlining your process increases the speed of your work while ensuring the consistent quality of your products. Today we speak with Leon Miller-Out, the CEO of a web app development and maintenance firm Singlebrook, about the top five best practices for legacy code maintenance. Listen to Leon and Scott reaching consensus in real-time, on the indispensable steps they take when dealing with legacy code. When you finish listening to the episode, checkout Singlebrook's libyear - a tool for measuring "dependency freshness." It just might change your life!

Oct 21, 2019

To survive, every software needs to change over time. However, if the changes are too steep, the survival might quickly turn into a demise. Today we talk with our own Scott Ford, co-founder of Corgibytes and co-host of the Legacy Code Rocks, about Lehman's laws - a set of principles that explain the forces which push software systems to change and the forces that restrain that change.  Hear from Scott how Lehman's laws can help you in your work and get to know Scott a little bit better.

Oct 7, 2019

Today we go back to where we started and we reprise the first ever episode of Legacy Code Rocks. Andrea and Scott discuss the idea of Makers (the developers who like to build things) and Menders (developers who like to fix things). We also define and explain the mission of this podcast. A great reminder for our old listeners and a perfect opportunity to catch-up for the new ones.

Sep 23, 2019

How can sticky notes help you and your team find and resolve problems which are deeply hidden within your business model? How can this quest through colorful papers accelerate the mending of a legacy code which supports that business model? Today we speak with Alberto Brandolini, an inventor of Event Storming, about how this fun and rapid group modeling technique can accelerate learning and productivity within your development team. From upgrading and improving the existing systems to developing new ones, Alberto’s Event Storming helps teams visualize every little wheel of complex machinery they are tasked to maintain or create. When you finish listening to the episode, make sure to visit Alberto’s website and to check out his nearly finished book.

Sep 9, 2019

Every creature, living or artificial, is learning through the interactions with its environment all the time. It is learning not only from other creatures it interacts with, but also from the context in which these interactions take place. When an environment becomes defined by such contextual mutual learning through interaction, it becomes a creature in its own right - an entity famously named by Nora Bateson as Symmathesy. Today we talk with Jessica Kerr, a developer at Atomist and an expert in development automation, about the ways of transforming your development team into a symmathesy. When you finish listening to the episode, make sure to take a listen of Jessica’s own podcasts Greater than Code and Arrested DevOps, and to read her blog at http://jessitron.com


Aug 26, 2019

To successfully lead a team, we must understand why our team members do what they do. To help us unpack that, we need to dig deep into their subconscious and explore their unconscious behavior which underlines most of human actions. Today we speak with Mike Bowler, a long-time Agile technical coach and a trained hypnotist with the interest in neuroscience and psychology, about techniques that help us understand unconscious behaviors. Mike explains the clean language technique developed by David Grove in the 1980s, offers a fresh look at hypnosis and links all of this to coding and software development. When you finish listening to the episode, make sure to visit Mike’s website www.unconsciousagile.com for more resources on unconscious behavior and hypnosis. 

Aug 12, 2019

We all strive to be “full stack” developers, but many of us feel more comfortable with either back-end or front-end programming. Today we talk with Jan Jorgensen, a front-end developer who also enjoys mending legacy applications. Jan works in the Copenhagen based UX research company and is an expert in adding front-end tooling to render components in a monolithic rails app and taking advantage of modern tools instead of writing the apps from scratch. Jan breaks down the main characteristics of front-end development, discusses good practices, opens for us his toolbox and explains how all of this fits into the legacy code maintenance and upgrading. And as an extra, you’ll hear how nomadic lifestyle and coding go together! 


Jul 29, 2019

What does legacy code mean to you? Is it a valuable code that is hard to change or a code you are simply afraid to change; a code that makes you money or a code you are ashamed of? In today’s episode we deep dive into the quest for the most interesting and influential definitions of legacy code with Amitai Schleier. Amitai is true renaissance man - a software development coach, legacy code wrestler, consultant, non-award-winning musician and award-winning bad poet. Amitai regularly contributes code and direction to notable open-source projects such as NetBSD, pkgsrc, ikiwiki, and qmail. When you finish listening to this episode, you should check out Amitai’s micropodcast “Agile in 3 Minutes”, his articles on legacy code and other topics, and last, but not least, you should relax with his piano performance of Medtner at the International Rachmaninoff Conference.

Jul 15, 2019

Lasting success is not measured by past achievements but by the ability to change and adapt to new developments and new demands. Nowhere does the change face more suspicion and distrust than in large enterprises with their established policies, practices and procedures, large bureaucracies, compartmentalized silos and, above all, undeniable past successes. Today we talk with Christine Chrys Sills, the Organization, Change, and Program Manager at Liatrio about DevOps transformations and how to bring change to large enterprises confident in their established ways. 



Jun 30, 2019

The mere fact that any particular legacy code is still in use is a testament of its sustainability. Today we talk with Dr. Carola Lilienthal, the CEO of the Workplace Solutions and the author of Sustainable Software Architecture about the importance of a good structure for the durability of a software. Building upon her experience dissecting more than 300 software systems of various sizes, Carola shares with us her philosophy, methodology, tools and criteria for assessing the sustainability of a system and explains how to structure any software around its fundamental building blocks in order to achieve its durability. 

Jun 17, 2019

The idea of a “lone genius” unleashing software marvels on the world is mostly a myth. Almost all good software is a product of the exchange of ideas, continuous discussions, and collaborations. Today we talk with Coraline Ada Ehmke - the creator of the Contributor Covenant and the laureate of the Ruby Hero Award - about the importance of kindness and empathy in coding. From creating safe spaces for discussions and exchange of ideas, through introducing empathy into understanding user needs and collaborators’ concerns, to creating a kinder programming language and the code itself - Coraline shares her thoughts with us on the whys and hows of kindness in software industry. When you are done with the episode, make sure to visit Coraline’s web-site.

Jun 3, 2019

Technical debt is just like a financial debt - incurring it responsibly boosts the development and growth, but failing to repay it in time can lead to bankruptcy and complete failure of the program. Today we talk with Tim Doherty, Staff Software Engineer at Procore Technologies and a co-organizer of the Santa Barbara JavaScript Meetup, about the responsible management of technical debt. Tim breaks down for us the Ward Cunningham’s definition of technical debt into sub-categories and shares with us the justifications for the acquisition and strategies for prudent repayment of these diverse kinds of technical debt. When you are done with the episode, you can check out Tim’s blog post that steered our conversation.

 

May 20, 2019

The key to understanding real (rather than perceived) goals of any technological project is to understand the people served by that technology. Today, we talk with Alok Sharma, a founding partner of the technology project management consultancy firm Sharma Analytics. Alok gives us a deep insight into his tripartite approach to rationalizing, selecting, planning, and managing technology in small to mid-sized organizations. After discussing the three key elements of his analytical approach -- people, processes, and data -- he explains why understanding people takes precedence over the two other components if a project is to succeed. When you finish listening to this episode, check out Alok’s video blog which gives many insights to managers on how they should think about technology in their organizations.

May 6, 2019

We take mental shortcuts every day in order to save our energy while achieving satisfactory results. These shortcuts, or heuristics, are in fact so mentally economical, that we are mostly not even aware of them! Yet, we use them all the time. In this episode, we talk with Rebecca Wirfs-Brock about heuristics we use in software design and why is it important to be aware of them. Rebecca is an object oriented design pioneer and an inventor of responsibility driven object design. She currently serves as a director of the Agile Alliance Experience Report Initiative and as a president of the Wirfs-Brock Associates consulting firm. When you are done with this episode, make sure to visit Rebecca’s blog where you will learn much more about design heuristics.

 

Apr 22, 2019

Edaqa Mortoray grew up programming. From interface design to scientific simulations, including video games and development products, he has coded a bit of everything. He is the author of the book “What is Programming?” and he runs a successful programming blog and a podcast. We talk with Edaqa about why every member of software development team should know who their user is and what their needs are. He then shares with us some good practices for defensive coding in this age of global users. When you are done with the episode, and if you want to hear more about the user-focused software design, make sure to watch Edaqa’s class on Skillshare.

Apr 8, 2019

According to Evgeny Demchenko, technical debt and financial debt have many things in common - if used strategically, they accelerate growth, if not repaid diligently, they hinder it. Evgeny is a CTO of an O2O talent sourcing platform Top Twenty Talent and one of the organizers of the Beijing Python Meetup. He is specialized in building startups, managing complex systems and refactoring code. We talk with Evgeny about his passion for refactoring and he shares with us his technical debt philosophy, his workflow and his favorite tools of the trade.

 

Mar 25, 2019

Marcus Blankenship is a technical leadership author, coach and speaker, helping great programmers and coders to become great tech leaders of the future. He is the author of the book “Habits That Ruin Your Technical Team: Pitfalls and Solutions for Technical Managers”. Marcus tells us what technical leadership is and how technical-experts-turn-leaders can fight their impulses to resolve problems themselves and start empowering their teams to resolve them instead. After you finish with the episode, check out Marcus’s web site at https://marcusblankenship.com/ where you will find plethora of resources and workshops.

Mar 11, 2019

Johanna Rothman is a “pragmatic manager” and longtime leader in the software development community. She has written over a dozen books on various aspects of shipping successful software applications. On this episode, Johanna shares with us how she got into working with legacy code, how long does it take for a greenfield project to become a legacy project, do the resource limitations constrain or boost creativity and what is the role of management in a creative process. When you finish listening to the episode, you can check out Johanna’s website at  www.jrothman.com where you will find an amazing collection of her workshops and training tools and materials.

 

Feb 25, 2019

Esther Derby started her career as a developer who loved machines and struggled with people. Now, she’s one of the world’s top experts in organizational dynamics and a leading thinker on bringing agility to organizations, management and teams. Esther playfully shares with us her intimate story of personal growth from being a satisfied solo coder to a team builder and gives us all some practical tips for learning skills that might be just outside our comfort zone.

Feb 11, 2019

In today’s episode, we chat with Lisa Crispin, Testing Advocate at Mabl, the co-author of the Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams and one of the most influential testing professionals in the industry. Join us to hear about the significance of the whole team approach, collaboration and feedback in testing, and how the cues of success through teamwork can come from even the most unexpected sources – including from the miniature donkeys!

Jan 17, 2019

In 2016, Taylor Jones was in a car crash that impacted his vision severely. After recovery, he has continued to code and design for the web even though he's blind. In this moving conversation, we talk with him about accessibility and how his development practices have changed. 

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