How I think about Code Management

This resource first appeared in issue #117 on 09 Apr 2022 and has tags Technical Leadership: Software Development, Technical Leadership: Testing

How I think about Code Management - Andreas Klinger

A lot of research software we start dealing with…., well, let’s say “has many opportunities to be made even better”. Klinger has a nice summary of maintaining and improving a code base over time. He sees it as having two components:

Reducing complexity, and
Increasing confidence

And that both of those can and should be addressed incrementally and continuously.

Klinger says that you handle the code complexity over time with refactoring (including my favourite refactoring, deleting code). You increase confidence by streamlining, automating as much as possible, documenting, and testing.

Both of these things are made a lot easier when there are clear expectations over new code, quantified (and automated, and enforced…!) wherever possible with linting and coding tools.