Improve Code by Removing It

One of the improvements I’ve made to our codebase over the last few weeks is to remove chunks of it.

We’d written the software following XP tenets, including YAGNI (that is, You Aren’t Gonna Need It). Human nature being what it is, we inevitably fell short in a few places.

So I’ve simplified the code, improved the product performance, and reduced the level of global code entropy simply by removing the offending features from the codebase. Helpfully, my unit tests tell me that I haven’t broken anything else during the operation.

A simple and thoroughly satisfying experience.

What are you working on right now? Is it all needed?

By Pete Goodliffe