Resilient Code: Maxims for Pain-free Programming

Why does the word "legacy" with synonyms like heritage and birthright now describe difficult software? What anchors our code making it rigid and unyielding? How do we identify those anchors? How do we write code that is less painful and more resilient?

Leonard is a software architect and .NET specialist who has spent his career asking and answering these questions. He has developed a list of maxims that serve as reminders on how to build systems that are easier to maintain, adapt, and grow.

When encountering difficult code, it is easy to want to tear it all down and start fresh. If we choose to do that, how do we ensure our successors will not want to do the same? What if we didn't have to tear it all down? What if we could identify the pain points in the current system and abstract them?

This book is full of examples. For example, the open/closed principle, the second of five well-known SOLID principles, says our code should be open for extension and closed for modification, but what does it look like when our code is closed for extension or open for modification? Each chapter of this book will focus on one of Leonard's code maxims which will highlight either some aspect of code design or the software development lifecycle.

Through this book, you will learn how to identify those things anchoring your code to the past. You will learn concepts that make testing and maintainability easy. Your code will be more resilient. When confronted with difficult code or changing business requirements, you will become more resilient.