Surviving a Legacy Codebase
summary
A live refactoring of a legacy Java service for a board‑game product showing how to regain control by adding characterization end-to-end tests (HTTP calls via RestAssured) to lock down behavior and reveal a bug where duplicate nicknames return 201 instead of 400. The refactor introduces a GoodGame domain object, moves business logic out of HTTP handlers, uses code‑coverage to identify safe vs risky areas, and demonstrates handling an external dice service dependency before adding more unit tests.
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chapters (11)
- 0:00Surviving legacy code
- 3:59Understand context first
- 7:13Legacy code analysis example
- 11:02Secure with characterization tests
- 18:14Test coverage tools
- 21:43Incremental refactoring
- 27:53Tech debt priorities
- 33:52Extract domain logic
- 37:43Handle external dependencies
- 42:46Legacy code principles
- 47:06Summary
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