Legacy Code Rocks

Our Legacy Code Rocks community is turning five this year. To mark this exciting milestone, we decided to catch up with Woody Zuill, our frequent guest, and a person who always manages to teach us something new and exciting. Woody is best known for introducing mob programming to the world, and so we kick-off the show by discussing mob programming in the age of COVID-19. However, as it is always with Woody, he expands our horizons far beyond any single topic. If you get inspired by this chat as much as we did, make sure to register for the series of Woody's public workshops, which will take place online from 20th to 22nd October.  Mentioned in this episode: Woody on Twitter at https://twitter.com/woodyzuill  Woody on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/woodyzuill/  Woody’s website at https://woodyzuill.com  Woody Zuill and Kevin Meadows, Mob Programming: A Whole Team Approach at https://leanpub.com/mobprogramming  Mob Programming Workshop 20-22 October 2020 tickets at https://www.eventbrite.it/e/mob-programming-online-workshop-tickets-115876980167?aff=erelpanelorg or https://allevents.in/online/mob-programming-online-workshop/10000115876980167  Graham Wallas, The Art of Thought at https://archive.org/details/theartofthought  Winston Royce, Managing the Development of Large Software Systems (Waterfall Paper) at http://www-scf.usc.edu/~csci201/lectures/Lecture11/royce1970.pdf  Zeigarnick Effect at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeigarnik_effect

Innovation is the hottest prize in the business. It attracts the most attention. It sells stocks in a blitz. It also distracts from what matters the most - maintaining, caring for, and upkeeping what we have already invented. Today we talk with Lee Vinsel, an assistant professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Virginia Tech College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, and Andy Russell, professor of history and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at SUNY Polytechnic Institute. Andy and Lee are technology historians and the authors of The Innovation Delusion, a new book that is coming out on September 8th, published by Penguin Random House. We provide you with a sneak peek into this book, which is already the number one bestseller on all major online bookstores. When you finish listening to the episode, be sure to grab your copy.  Mentioned in this episode: Lee Vinsel’s website at http://leevinsel.com/about  Andy Russell’s website at https://arussell.org/  Virginia Tech College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences at https://liberalarts.vt.edu/  SUNY Polytechnic Institute College of Arts and Sciences at https://sunypoly.edu/academics/colleges/college-arts-sciences  Lee Vinsel, Andrew Russell, The Innovation Delusion at https://amzn.to/31wJI8U The Maintainers at https://themaintainers.org  Legacy Code Rocks, Proactive Programming with PJ Hagerty at https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/legacy-code-rocks/id1146634772?i=1000489001499 *Heads up! If you purchase the book through any of the links above, we will get a small commission which helps us continue to bring quality content to our Legacy Code Rocks! community. You won’t pay a penny more, we receive a small kickback, and you’re supporting our friends who wrote the book. Everybody wins!

When you build a house, you first build its foundations. This is what ensures its durability. The same stands for writing code - if written upon strong foundations, it will not be blown away by the first wind of change. The best way to achieve this is to think proactively. Today we talk with PJ Hagerty, the founder of devrelate.io, organizer of DevOps Days Buffalo, a developer, writer, speaker, musician, and community advocate. PJ tells us the secrets of proactive programming and how it can prolong the life of your code. When you finish listening to the episode, connect with PJ on Twitter and LinkedIn.  Mentioned in this episode PJ on Twitter at https://twitter.com/aspleenic  PJ on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/pjhagerty/  Devrelate at http://www.devrelate.io  Open Sourcing Mental Illness at https://osmihelp.org  DevOps Days Buffalo at https://devopsdays.org/events/2020-buffalo/welcome/ Chad Fowler, Dave Thomas, Andy Hunt, Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmers’ Guide (The Facts of Ruby), 4th Edition at https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1937785491/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i1 Leadership from a Dancing Guy at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hO8MwBZl-Vc 

As we are going through a racial injustice reckoning here in the United States, each of us needs to look in the mirror, actively seek information, and find a way to contribute to a more just future. We can't talk about fixing code before we talk about the neglected voices in the process of building and mending that very code. Today we talk with Bryan Liles, a senior staff engineer at VMware, a team leader, and a code writer who tries to pump goodwill into the world. We talk about racial injustice in America, its origins, its stubborn perseverance, and the ways to combat it and eradicate it once and for all. When you finish listening to the episode, connect with Bryan on LinkedIn or Twitter, and take a listen to the speech he gave at RubyNation 2013, which inspired this interview.  Mentioned in this episode: Bryan on Twitter at https://twitter.com/bryanl  Bryan on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryanliles/  VMware at https://www.vmware.com  Bryan’s talk at RubyNation 2013 Why We Do What We Do at https://vimeo.com/103704732  The Kerner Commission Report on Civil Disorders at http://www.eisenhowerfoundation.org/docs/kerner.pdf  Ibram X. Kendi, How To Be An Antiracist at https://www.ibramxkendi.com/how-to-be-an-antiracist-1

Staying agile is most important in times of crisis. After more than four months of Covid-19 disruption, it is clear that we are going through one of those era-defining moments. As the crisis drags on, we need to adapt and be more agile than ever. Today we talk with our own Andrea Goulet, Corgibytes CEO and Legacy Code Rocks co-host, about big changes we are going through here at Legacy Code Rocks and Corgibytes. So, take a listen and stay tuned!

Imagine if there were a tool to help you measure your code’s complexity, coverage, and smells, blend it all together and present you with an average score assessing your technical debt. SkunkScore is precisely such a tool. Today we talk with Ernesto Tagwerker, founder of Ombu Labs and fastruby.io—and the developer of the SkunkScore—about software maintenance and how to use SkunkScore to identify the most problematic parts of your code and guide you through your refactoring adventure.  Mentioned in this episode: Ernesto on Twitter at https://twitter.com/etagwerker  Ernesto on GitHub at https://github.com/etagwerker  Ombu Labs at https://www.ombulabs.com  Fastruby at https://www.fastruby.io  Download SkunkScore at https://github.com/fastruby/skunk 

The need for speedy delivery is the reality of contemporary business. The requirements of modern software development are no different. However, when writing software we are making decisions based on knowledge, and finding knowledge often takes time. This is where we turn to software documentation, only to find it frustrating, incomplete, obsolete, or misleading. Today we talk with Cyrille Martraire, a software developer, finance business analyst, and the author of the book Living Documentation: Continuous Knowledge Sharing by Design, about how to make your documentation more comprehensive, useful, and intuitive. When you finish listening to the episode, connect with Cyrille on Twitter, check out his website, and take a look at his new book! Mentioned in this episode: Cyrille on Twitter: https://twitter.com/cyriux?lang=en Cyrille’s website: http://cyrille.martraire.com Cyrille Martraire, Living Documentation: Continuous Knowledge Sharing by Design: https://www.amazon.com/Living-Documentation-Cyrille-Martraire/dp/0134689321 More on stigmergy at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stigmergy Eric Evans, Domain Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00794TAUG/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i0 ArchUnit: https://www.archunit.org

There are many causes of technical debt - unknown or ill-defined requirements, business pressures to deliver fast, procedural deficiencies during development, and many more. These are often just manifestations of a larger problem - lack of understanding due to limitations of natural language and inability to predict future social and technical developments. Today we talk with Einar W. Høst, a programmer at the NRK, Norwegian public broadcasting company, about these sociolinguistic causes of technical debt. We can't predict the future, but we can adopt strategies to make our code more flexible and resilient. Einar shares with us a few of these strategies. When you finish listening to the episode, connect with Einar on Twitter.  Mentioned in this episode: Einar on Twitter at https://twitter.com/einarwh?lang=en Norwegian public broadcasting company NRK at https://www.nrk.no/about/ Ward Cunningham on technical debt metaphor at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqeJFYwnkjE Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractus Logico-Philosophicus at https://www.amazon.com/dp/0486404455/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_bUv-Eb722FCY3 William Kent, Data and Realit: A Timeless Perspective on Perceiving and Managing Information in Our Imprecise World, 3rd Edition at https://www.amazon.com/dp/1935504215/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_7Uv-EbEH73Z2J 

Do you ever feel like we are entering the age of democratization of software development? Do you fear that the platforms enabling novices with little coding experience to develop software applications are commoditizing your service as a developer? Today we talk with James Augeri, a serial entrepreneur, Techstars alumni, U.S. Airforce veteran, and a founder of Jingle, where he is working on making better search experiences. James shares with us his passion for low-code platforms - software applications designed to provide a software development environment through GUI and model-driven logic, instead of hard coding. What are their advantages, and where are their limits? When are they useful, and when do they become a liability? James' answers to these questions will help you navigate this incoming disruption. When you finish listening to the episode, make sure to connect with James on LinkedIn and Twitter. Mentioned in this episode: James on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/dotdotjames/ James on Twitter at https://twitter.com/DotDotJames Jingle at https://heyjingle.com WordPress at https://wordpress.org  Drupal at https://www.drupal.org  Zapier at https://zapier.com Workato at https://www.workato.com  Bubble at https://bubble.io/ Knack at https://knack.com/ Duda at https://duda.co/

When dealing with legacy code, it is easy to forget that the pipeline to deploy that code could be just as much "legacy' as the code itself. So how do you puzzle your way through resurrecting the pipeline, and how do you handle a legacy application from a CI/CD pipeline standpoint? Today we talk with Laura Santamaria, a LogDNA's development advocate, and DevOps practitioner. She shares with us the secrets of reconstructing legacy pipelines from the available logs and data, what to do when no data is available, and how to make legacy application's pipeline more usable for the next maintainer down the line. When you finish listening to the episode, connect with Laura on Twitter, and visit her website at https://speaking.nimbinatus.com. Mentioned in this episode: Laura on Twitter at https://twitter.com/nimbinatus?lang=en Laura’s website at https://speaking.nimbinatus.com LogDNA at https://logdna.com Rackspace at https://www.rackspace.com