Books about Refactoring from Amazon.com

This is the eBook version of the printed book. If the print book includes a CD-ROM, this content is not included within the eBook version Get more out of your legacy systems: more performance, functionality, reliability, and manageability Is your code easy to change? Can you get nearly instantaneous feedback when you do change it? Do you understand it? If the answer to any of these questions is no, you have legacy code, and it is draining time and money away from your development efforts. In this book, Michael Feathers offers start-to-finish strategies for working more effectively with large, untested legacy code bases. This book draws on material Michael created for his renowned Object Mentor seminars: techniques Michael has used in mentoring to help hundreds of developers, technical managers, and testers bring their legacy systems under control.

The topics covered include

• Understanding the mechanics of software change: adding features, fixing bugs, improving design, optimizing performance
• Getting legacy code into a test harness
• Writing tests that protect you against introducing new problems
• Techniques that can be used with any language or platform-with examples in Java, C++, C, and C#
• Accurately identifying where code changes need to be made
• Coping with legacy systems that aren't object-oriented
• Handling applications that don't seem to have any structure

This book also includes a catalog of twenty-four dependency-breaking techniques that help you work with program elements in isolation and make safer changes.

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Price: $41.93 [Notify me when price goes down.]

As the application of object technology-particularly the Java programming language-has become commonplace, a new problem has emerged to confront the software development community. Significant numbers of poorly designed programs have been created by less-experienced developers, resulting in applications that are inefficient and hard to maintain and extend. Increasingly, software system professionals are discovering just how difficult it is to work with these inherited, "non-optimal" applications. For several years, expert-level object programmers have employed a growing collection of techniques to improve the structural integrity and performance of such existing software programs. Referred to as "refactoring," these practices have remained in the domain of experts because no attempt has been made to transcribe the lore into a form that all developers could use. . .until now. In Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Software, renowned object technology mentor Martin Fowler breaks new ground, demystifying these master practices and demonstrating how software practitioners can realize the significant benefits of this new process.

With proper training a skilled system designer can take a bad design and rework it into well-designed, robust code. In this book, Martin Fowler shows you where opportunities for refactoring typically can be found, and how to go about reworking a bad design into a good one. Each refactoring step is simple-seemingly too simple to be worth doing. Refactoring may involve moving a field from one class to another, or pulling some code out of a method to turn it into its own method, or even pushing some code up or down a hierarchy. While these individual steps may seem elementary, the cumulative effect of such small changes can radically improve the design. Refactoring is a proven way to prevent software decay.

In addition to discussing the various techniques of refactoring, the author provides a detailed catalog of more than seventy proven refactorings with helpful pointers that teach you when to apply them; step-by-step instructions for applying each refactoring; and an example illustrating how the refactoring works. The illustrative examples are written in Java, but the ideas are applicable to any object-oriented programming language..
Price: $42.74 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Even the best developers have seen well-intentioned software projects fail -- often because the customer kept changing requirements, and end users didn't know how to use the software you developed. Instead of surrendering to these common problems, let Head First Software Development guide you through the best practices of software development. Before you know it, those failed projects will be a thing of the past.

With its unique visually rich format, this book pulls together the hard lessons learned by expert software developers over the years. You'll gain essential information about each step of the software development lifecycle -- requirements, design, coding, testing, implementing, and maintenance -- and understand why and how different development processes work.

This book is for you if you are:

• Tired of your customers assuming you're psychic. You'll learn not only how to get good requirements, but how to make sure you're always building the software that customers want (even when they're not sure themselves)
• Wondering when the other 15 programmers you need to get your project done on time are going to show up. You'll learn how some very simple scheduling and prioritizing will revolutionize your success rate in developing software.
• Confused about being rational, agile, or a tester. You'll learn not only about the various development methodologies out there, but how to choose a solution that's right for your project.
• Confused because the way you ran your last project worked so well, but failed miserably this time around. You'll learn how to tackle each project individually, combine lessons you've learned on previous projects with cutting-edge development techniques, and end up with great software on every project.

Head First Software Development is here to help you learn in a way that your brain likes... and you'll have a blast along the way. Why pick up hundreds of boring books on the philosophy of this approach or the formal techniques required for that one? Stick with Head First Software Development, and your projects will succeed like never before. Go on, get started... you'll learn and have fun. We promise..
Price: $24.55 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Automated testing is a cornerstone of agile development An effective testing strategy will deliver new functionality more aggressively, accelerate user feedback, and improve quality. However, for many developers, creating effective automated tests is a unique and unfamiliar challenge.

xUnit Test Patterns is the definitive guide to writing automated tests using xUnit, the most popular unit testing framework in use today. Agile coach and test automation expert Gerard Meszaros describes 68 proven patterns for making tests easier to write, understand, and maintain. He then shows you how to make them more robust and repeatable--and far more cost-effective.

Loaded with information, this book feels like three books in one. The first part is a detailed tutorial on test automation that covers everything from test strategy to in-depth test coding. The second part, a catalog of 18 frequently encountered "test smells," provides trouble-shooting guidelines to help you determine the root cause of problems and the most applicable patterns. The third part contains detailed descriptions of each pattern, including refactoring instructions illustrated by extensive code samples in multiple programming languages.

Topics covered include

• Writing better tests--and writing them faster
• The four phases of automated tests: fixture setup, exercising the system under test, result verification, and fixture teardown
• Improving test coverage by isolating software from its environment using Test Stubs and Mock Objects
• Designing software for greater testability
• Using test "smells" (including code smells, behavior smells, and project smells) to spot problems and know when and how to eliminate them
• Refactoring tests for greater simplicity, robustness, and execution speed

This book will benefit developers, managers, and testers working with any agile or conventional development process, whether doing test-driven development or writing the tests last. While the patterns and smells are especially applicable to all members of the xUnit family, they also apply to next-generation behavior-driven development frameworks such as RSpec and JBehave and to other kinds of test automation tools, including recorded test tools and data-driven test tools such as Fit and FitNesse.

Visual Summary of the Pattern Language 
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Refactoring a Test
PART I: The Narratives
Chapter 1 A Brief Tour
Chapter 2 Test Smells
Chapter 3 Goals of Test Automation
Chapter 4 Philosophy of Test Automation
Chapter 5 Principles of Test Automation
Chapter 6 Test Automation Strategy
Chapter 7 xUnit Basics
Chapter 8 Transient Fixture Management
Chapter 9 Persistent Fixture Management
Chapter 10 Result Verification
Chapter 11 Using Test Doubles
Chapter 12 Organizing Our Tests
Chapter 13 Testing with Databases
Chapter 14 A Roadmap to Effective Test Automation
PART II: The Test Smells 
Chapter 15 Code Smells
Chapter 16 Behavior Smells
Chapter 17 Project Smells
PART III: The Patterns 
Chapter 18 Test Strategy Patterns
Chapter 19 xUnit Basics Patterns
Chapter 20 Fixture Setup Patterns
Chapter 21 Result Verification Patterns
Chapter 22 Fixture Teardown Patterns
Chapter 23 Test Double Patterns
Chapter 24 Test Organization Patterns
Chapter 25 Database Patterns
Chapter 26 Design-for-Testability Patterns
Chapter 27 Value Patterns
PART IV: Appendixes
Appendix A Test Refactorings  
Appendix B xUnit Terminology 
Appendix C xUnit Family Members
Appendix D Tools
Appendix E Goals and Principles
Appendix F Smells, Aliases, and Causes
Appendix G Patterns, Aliases, and Variations
Glossary
References 
Index 

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Price: $41.38 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In test driven development, you first write an executable test of what your application code must do. Only then do you write the code itself and, with the test spurring you on, you improve your design. In acceptance test driven development (ATDD), you use the same technique to implement product features, benefiting from iterative development, rapid feedback cycles, and better-defined requirements. TDD and its supporting tools and techniques lead to better software faster.

Test Driven brings under one cover practical TDD techniques distilled from several years of community experience. With examples in Java and the Java EE environment, it explores both the techniques and the mindset of TDD and ATDD. It uses carefully chosen examples to illustrate TDD tools and design patterns, not in the abstract but concretely in the context of the technologies you face at work. It is accessible to TDD beginners, and it offers effective and less well known techniques to older TDD hands.

What's Inside

Learn hands-on to test drive Java code

How to avoid common TDD adoption pitfalls

Acceptance test driven development and the Fit framework

How to test Java EE components-Servlets, JSPs, and Spring Controllers

Tough issues like multithreaded programs and data access code.
Price: $24.69 [Notify me when price goes down.]

What can you do when database performance doesn't meet expectations? Before you turn to expensive hardware upgrades to solve the problem, reach for this book. Refactoring SQL Applications provides a set of tested options for making code modifications to dramatically improve the way your database applications function. Backed by real-world examples, you'll find quick fixes for simple problems, in-depth answers for more complex situations, and complete solutions for applications with extensive problems. Learn to:

• Determine if and where you can expect performance gains
• Apply quick fixes, such as limiting calls to the database in stored functions and procedures
• Refactor tasks, such as replacing application code by a stored procedure, or replacing iterative, procedural statements with sweeping SQL statements
• Refactor flow by increasing parallelism and switching business-inducted processing from synchronous to asynchronous
• Refactor design using schema extensions, regular views, materialized views, partitioning, and more
• Compare before and after versions of a program to ensure you get the same results once you make modifications

Refactoring SQL Applications teaches you to recognize and assess code that needs refactoring, and to understand the crucial link between refactoring and performance. If and when your application bogs down, this book will help you get it back up to speed..
Price: $21.94 [Notify me when price goes down.]

To keep programming productive and enjoyable, state-of-the-art practices and principles are essential Object-oriented programming and design help manage complexity by keeping components cleanly separated. Unit testing helps prevent endless, exhausting debugging sessions. Refactoring keeps code supple and readable. PHP offers all this-and more.

This book shows you how to apply PHP techniques and principles to all the most common challenges of web programming, including:

Web presentation and templates

User interaction including the Model-View-Contoller architecture

Input validation and form handling

Database connection and querying and abstraction

Object persistence.
Price: $19.67 [Notify me when price goes down.]

“Wow, what a compendium of great information and how-to’s! I am so impressed! Elliotte’s written a book whose title comes nowhere near to
doing it justice. Covering much more than just refactoring, this book explains how to do it right the first time around, in a clear and lucid
voice. Harold obviously knows his stuff. A must-read!”
—Howard Katz, Proprietor, Fatdog Software

“After working with people who require the skills and tools necessary to continually improve the quality and security of their applications, I
have discovered a missing link. The ability to rebuild and recode applications is a key area of weakness for web designers and web application
developers alike. By building refactoring into the development process, incremental changes to the layout or internals efficiently averts a total
rewrite or complete make-over. This is a fantastic book for anyone who needs to rebuild, recode, or refactor the web.”
—Andre Gironda, tssci-security.com

“Elliotte’s book provides a rare collection of hints and tricks that will vastly improve the quality of web pages. Virtually any serious HTML
developer, new or tenured, in any size organization will reap tremendous benefit from implementing even a handful of his suggestions.”
—Matt Lavallee, Development Manager, MLS Property Information Network, Inc.

Like any other software system, Web sites gradually accumulate “cruft” over time. They slow down. Links break. Security and compatibility problems mysteriously appear. New features don’t integrate seamlessly. Things just don’t work as well. In an ideal world, you’d rebuild from scratch. But you can’t: there’s no time or money for that. Fortunately, there’s a solution: You can refactor your Web code using easy, proven techniques, tools, and recipes adapted from the world of software development.

In Refactoring HTML, Elliotte Rusty Harold explains how to use refactoring to improve virtually any Web site or application. Writing for programmers and non-programmers alike, Harold shows how to refactor for better reliability, performance, usability, security, accessibility, compatibility, and even search engine placement. Step by step, he shows how to migrate obsolete code to today’s stable Web standards, including XHTML, CSS, and REST—and eliminate chronic problems like presentation-based markup, stateful applications, and “tag soup.”

The book’s extensive catalog of detailed refactorings and practical “recipes for success” are organized to help you find specific solutions fast, and get maximum benefit for minimum effort. Using this book, you can quickly improve site performance now—and make your site far easier to enhance, maintain, and scale for years to come.

Topics covered include

•    Recognizing the “smells” of Web code that should be refactored
•    Transforming old HTML into well-formed, valid XHTML, one step at a time
•    Modernizing existing layouts with CSS
•    Updating old Web applications: replacing POST with GET, replacing old contact forms, and refactoring JavaScript
•    Systematically refactoring content and links
•    Restructuring sites without changing the URLs your users rely upon

This book will be an indispensable resource for Web designers, developers, project managers, and anyone who maintains or updates existing sites. It will be especially helpful to Web professionals who learned HTML years ago, and want to refresh their knowledge with today’s standards-compliant best practices.
This book will be an indispensable resource for Web designers, developers, project managers, and anyone who maintains or updates existing sites. It will be especially helpful to Web professionals who learned HTML years ago, and want to refresh their knowledge with today’s standards-compliant best practices.

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Price: $24.97 [Notify me when price goes down.]