Book Image

Refactoring with C#

By : Matt Eland
5 (1)
Book Image

Refactoring with C#

5 (1)
By: Matt Eland

Overview of this book

Software projects start as brand-new greenfield projects, but invariably become muddied in technical debt far sooner than you’d expect. In Refactoring with C#, you'll explore what technical debt is and how it arises before walking through the process of safely refactoring C# code using modern tooling in Visual Studio and more recent C# language features using C# 12 and .NET 8. This book will guide you through the process of refactoring safely through advanced unit testing with XUnit and libraries like Moq, Snapper, and Scientist .NET. You'll explore maintainable code through SOLID principles and defensive coding techniques made possible in newer versions of C#. You'll also find out how to run code analysis and write custom Roslyn analyzers to detect and resolve issues unique to your code. The nature of coding is changing, and you'll explore how to use AI with the GitHub Copilot Chat to refactor, test, document, and generate code before ending with a discussion about communicating technical debt to leadership and getting organizational buy-in to refactor your code in enterprise organizations and in agile teams. By the end of this book, you'll understand the nature of refactoring and see how you can safely, effectively, and repeatably pay down the technical debt in your application while adding value to your business.
Table of Contents (24 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Part 1: Refactoring with C# in Visual Studio
7
Part 2: Refactoring Safely
13
Part 3: Advanced Refactoring with AI and Code Analysis
18
Part 4: Refactoring in the Enterprise

AI-Assisted Refactoring with GitHub Copilot

Change is a constant in technology, and that’s certainly true in the .NET ecosystem. Every year, Microsoft releases a new version of .NET and C# packed with new features to keep the language exciting, useful, and relevant as technology changes. But perhaps the most significant changes to .NET development in the last two years have come not from the major language releases, but in the field of artificial intelligence through AI agents such as GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT.

In this chapter, we’ll explore how GitHub Copilot integrates into Visual Studio and brings ChatGPT-like conversational AI into your editor. We’ll also explore some of the interesting possibilities this opens and some of the things we must keep in mind when considering whether this new technology has a place in our toolset.

We’ll cover the following topics in this chapter:

  • Introducing GitHub Copilot
  • Getting started with GitHub Copilot...