Slashdot Mirror
The P.G. Wodehouse Method of Refactoring
covertbadger notes a developer's blog entry on a novel way of judging progress in refactoring code. "Software quality tools can never completely replace the gut instinct of a developer — you might have massive test coverage, but that won't help with subjective measures such as code smells. With Wodehouse-style refactoring, we can now easily keep track of which code we are happy with, and which code we remain deeply suspicious of."
...is a neat idea. Besides the mentioned practice of raising and lowering pieces of code that the developers are happy and dissatisified with, hanging code encourages peer review.
Perhaps not in-depth code review, but physically hanging code in your office might "scare" developers into adhering to their organization's standards for fear of their coworkers mockery of poor code.
It might be difficult to hide shitty code when anyone can walk by and look at what *you* think is good.
(At least it might take just as much effort to hide bad code as it does to make it good.)
I really like the concept, and it fits in with a bunch of techniques we've been using at work in line with the "Big Visible Charts" ideas. Things like this and Agile stories written on index cards and pinned to the wall do sound hokey. A number of people like Johanna Rothman http://www.pragprog.com/titles/jrpm however point out, that these techniques are a lot more inclusive and (as I've found) you get much more animated discussions than the pm/architect/team lead writing a document "for discussion."
If nothing else it's fun to watch management trying to cope with your walls being covered with sheets of paper, cards and string when they've paid all this money for MS Project and the Rational Suite.