Michael Feathers, Author of "Working Effectively with Legacy Code"

Michael Feathers is a consultant with Object Mentor. He balances his time between working with, training and coaching various teams around the world.

Prior to joining Object Mentor, Michael designed a proprietary programming language and wrote a compiler for it, he also designed a large multi-platform class library and a framework for instrumentation control. Publically, Michael developed Cppunit, the initial port of JUnit to C++, and FitCpp, a C++ port of the FIT integrated-test framework. Michael is also the author of the book 'Working Effectively with Legacy Code' (Prentice Hall 2004).

Twitter: @mfeathers

Presentation: "Objects On Trial"

Time: Wednesday 09:20 - 10:20

Location: Metropolitan Ballroom

Abstract: It’s been a quarter of a century since objects really arrived on the software scene, with great fanfare, lofty expectations, and more than a little hype. One can argue, and there are those who do, that objects have won. That their triumph is complete. That object-oriented programming has become, well, programming. And yet, the case can be made that this “victory” has come at a cost that must be measured against the conceptual complexity these highbrow languages have brought with them, the architectural Balkanization and “Trail of Tiers” they have wrought, and the impedance mismatches that have resulted from the Babel of languages that O-O has spawned, and its defeat in the data tier.

Have objects met the transformative promises made for them a generation ago? Or have they done more harm than good?

The time has come to put them on trial. We’ll remand objects themselves to the dock, and hear from a panel of distinguished, expert witnesses for the prosecution and the defense, before letting the You, the Jury, decide their fate.

Presentation: "Software Naturalism - Embracing the Real Behind the Ideal"

Track: Beautiful Code

Time: Wednesday 14:05 - 15:05

Location: Stanford

Abstract:

In the software development industry, we spend a lot of time talking about good design and not nearly enough time talking about design as it is practiced normally. Every code base bears the mark of thousands of micro and macro code design decisions. In the end these decisions give code bases form and the form that they culminate in is rarely what we call beautiful.

In this talk, Michael Feathers will outline the forces that lead to the sort of code we find in the industry and discuss how we might alter our notions of beauty in design in response to the bare facts about how our actions give code shape..