Talk Abstract
Complexity is an emergent property of code, at some point a codebase will cross a tipping point between simple and complicated. This has a number of negative consequences related to bugs, testability, extendability, and ultimately project success. This talk will explain what code complexity is, how it emerges, how to spot it early, and how to mitigate its effects.
Talk Description
The aim of this talk is to highlight the importance of complexity management in software development. It will show developers how to spot code complexity and minimises it. This will help developers and businesses avoid costly re-writes or project cancellations. The talk covers three areas:
What is Code Complexity?
Software by its nature is complex, vastly complex in fact. It is though a pointless and futile endeavour to consider all the dependencies which are required to produce working software. Instead this talk will focus on complexity in terms of individual projects and codebases.
How to Spot Code Complexity
There are two ways to spot code complexity, tooling and manual analysis. The former relies on metrics such as Cyclomatic Complexity. These metrics can provide an early warning system for the emergence of complexity, but they do not provide a complete answer. Developers also need to learn how to spot the signs of complexity by reading code and analysing its design. The talk will review which metrics and tools help manage complexity, and provide code examples which highlight the telltale signs of complexity.
Code Isolation
Code Isolation is the core design principle which aims to minimise code complexity. It is the bedrock on which Clean Architecture sits, and its basic principle is “A should not know about B or C or anything else.” The overall aim is to isolate domains and units of code so they are simple, readable, testable and extendable. The talk will provide practical examples of how to write isolated code so as to reduce complexity.
Notes
Code Complexity is a topic of importance to me and I have written a number of posts on the subject which explain my thinking on the subject in more detail.
Presented At
TBC
Slides
TBC
Videos
TBC