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

Understanding testing and unit tests

Whenever I was managing or mentoring another developer and they wanted to make a change to a system I’d ask them a question: “How can you be sure your change won’t break things?”

This simple question can be deceptively hard to answer, but every answer I’ve ever heard boils down to a single concept: testing.

I define testing as the process of verifying software functionality and detecting unwanted changes to program behavior.

This testing could be done by a human, such as a developer or a quality assurance analyst, or it could be done via software, depending on the type of test involved.

Types of tests and the testing pyramid

Testing is a broad field that encompasses many different types of activities, including the following:

  • Manual testing, which involves a person performing some activity manually and verifying the outcome.
  • Exploratory testing, a subset of manual testing that focuses...