Software Archeology and The Code Of Doom
summary
Argues that treating legacy systems like excavation yields actionable fixes and shows concrete tools and results: static metrics with flog and Flay, churn vs complexity graphs from a homebrew turbulence treemap, code‑history mining and coverage reports, applied to CalaGator and Canvas LMS. Presents surprising numbers (project average complexity ~8.7, hotspots over 95 and single files >13,000), finds a UI import flag disabled since 2009, and demonstrates targeted refactors that reduce pain points.
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chapters (25)
- 0:00Introduction
- 0:45About Kerri
- 3:45Legacy Code
- 5:55Archeology
- 6:59Code Archeology
- 9:05Surveillance
- 9:49Live coding
- 10:22Look at the readme
- 15:26Rig Status
- 17:29Rails Notes
- 24:47Turbulence
- 26:17Treemap
- 26:47Canvas LMS
- 27:57Canvas Treemap
- 28:27Code Metrics
- 30:47Excavation
- 32:47FixMe
- 34:17Git Log
- 35:37Git Follow
- 38:07Python Tools
- 38:57Scientific Analysis
- 40:27Code Coverage
- 40:47Code History Minor
- 44:17EFEN
- 47:42Human Nature
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