Book Image

Agile Technical Practices Distilled

By : Pedro M. Santos, Marco Consolaro, Alessandro Di Gioia
Book Image

Agile Technical Practices Distilled

By: Pedro M. Santos, Marco Consolaro, Alessandro Di Gioia

Overview of this book

The number of popular technical practices has grown exponentially in the last few years. Learning the common fundamental software development practices can help you become a better programmer. This book uses the term Agile as a wide umbrella and covers Agile principles and practices, as well as most methodologies associated with it. You’ll begin by discovering how driver-navigator, chess clock, and other techniques used in the pair programming approach introduce discipline while writing code. You’ll then learn to safely change the design of your code using refactoring. While learning these techniques, you’ll also explore various best practices to write efficient tests. The concluding chapters of the book delve deep into the SOLID principles - the five design principles that you can use to make your software more understandable, flexible and maintainable. By the end of the book, you will have discovered new ideas for improving your software design skills, the relationship within your team, and the way your business works.
Table of Contents (31 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Section 1
7
Section 2
13
Section 3
19
Section 4
25
Chapter 21
28
License: CyberDojo

Chapter 14

Design VIII –The Four Elements of Simple Design

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

– Generally attributed to Leonardo Da Vinci

I personally love the four elements of simple design. It is the highest-level set of principles, more like a set of goals to pursue with a defined priority than rigid rules to apply or break. This meshes well with my personality, but it also works really well when you have to make trade-off decisions while refactoring the design.

In my opinion, the key element of the set is the focus on expressivity, considered one of the fundamental properties of good design. While the other three elements are very important, and we have seen many practices and principles that support them, I feel that there is generally not enough consideration about code expressing its intentions.

Working on a very clean and expressive code base is the most satisfying technical experience for me as a developer. Knowing that I can...