Tidy First?: A Personal Exercise in Empirical Software Design

Written by Kent Beck

Narrated by Stephen R. Thorne

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:



● Understand the basic theory of how software design works and the forces that act on it



● Explore the difference between changes to a system's behavior and changes to its structure



● Improve your programming experience by sometimes tidying first and sometimes tidying after



● Learn how to make large changes in small, safe steps



● Approach software design as an exercise in human relationships

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ascent Audio
• Release date: Oct 15, 2024
• ISBN: 9781663735508

Kent Beck

Kent Beck is a programmer, creator of Extreme Programming, pioneer of software patterns, coauthor of JUnit, rediscoverer of Test-Driven Development, and observer of 3X: Explore/Expand/Extract. Beck is also alphabetically the first signatory of the Agile Manifesto. He lives in San Francisco, California, and he is Chief Scientist at Mechanical Orchard, teaching skills to help geeks feel safe in the world. Readers can connect with or follow him via: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kentlbeck Twitter: https://twitter.com/KentBeck LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kentbeck Medium: https://medium.com/@kentbeck_7670 Website: https://www.kentbeck.com

Reviews for Tidy First?

[scottjpearson · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

When a software developer is writing code, she/he is often confronted with a problem: How much work should I put into writing “the best” code versus just doing a quick but serviceable job? Kent Beck, pioneer of the influential Extreme Programming: Embrace Change, addresses this question via an in-depth look at the process of “tidying” code. His answer is usually to “tidy first”… but not always. This book seeks to identify exactly when one is in those exceptional situations.

Interestingly, Beck even explores economic reasons in his analysis – a main driver of developer effort that’s not talked about much in development books. These reasons are explored at a theoretical level that incorporates a bit of economic theory.

At times, this book can seem to be overly organizational and thus a bit dreary. That is, it categorizes situations instead of constructing a narrative. This approach became an extremely obvious limitation while I listened on an audiobook format. Perhaps a written text might avoid this pitfall somewhat more, but I suspect that even then, this shortcoming will show up in the reader’s experience.

This book’s audience is limited to those engaged in the art and practice of software design and development. The size of that audience is not huge, but it is growing. Developers can continue to learn from Kent Beck, one of the most observant, self-aware software authors in the industry. Those who desire to better themselves daily will benefit from his passion and attention to detail in this book.