Reading Legacy Code Without Losing Your Mind
Legacy code is code without understanding. Three cheap mapping techniques change that: dependency maps, characterization tests, and strangler fig seams.
Code That Makes Sense
For engineers who refuse to stop thinking in the AI era. Because 'it compiles' isn't the same as 'it works'.
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Case Study: The Method With 19 Parameters
A case study about a real registration method that grew to 19 parameters and how we made it maintainable using the Pipes and Filters and Strangler Fig patterns.
"It's Just Hard to Test" Is a Design Smell
Frontend testability is a property of the design, not the framework. Pull the business rule out of the component and 'hard to test' stops being true.
Your Test Suite Is Lying to You
Coverage counts the lines that ran, not the lines verified. A method can reach 100% with its rules unverified. Mutation testing measures the gap.
Refactoring Without Permission
Most refactoring never needed a sprint or a backlog item. It fits inside the feature branch we already have open, as long as the commits stay separate.
Why Your Team Lead Blocks Refactoring
Your team lead isn't against quality. His "no" to refactoring is due to delivery pressure and risk, not indifference, and here's how to argue in his terms.
The Cost of "Just Ship It"
"Just ship it" isn't wrong, it's unpriced. The post is about what shipping without design actually costs, in three numbers a manager already tracks.
Tech Debt Is a Tool
Tech debt is two opposite things sharing one name: an intentional shortcut we chose, and an accidental mess nobody intended.
Why Your Service Class Knows Too Much
A service class isn't big because the domain is hard, but because the behavior never went home. A domain name holds the line that the Service suffix never could.
Feature Flags Are Just Polymorphic Dispatch
A feature flag that branches on a string is a type code in disguise. Replace it with polymorphic dispatch, and the generated wiring makes a flag safe to delete.
When the Verb Wants to Be a Noun
A transfer between two accounts fits in neither. The DDD move: promote the verb to an aggregate, then let event sourcing calculate the balances.