A recent project I was on meant testing a lot of legacy code, in fact I think it was all legacy code! So I thought I'd write some bits about what the challenges are or what you should look for. Firstly, let me start by defining what I mean by legacy code. I have seen definitions of legacy code which state any code without unit tests can be defined as legacy, whilst this is true, I also like to think of legacy code as something that isn't being refactoring, isn't being improved upon, it is what it is, to quote Ronseal "it does exactly what it says on the tin". The problem with the Ronseal analogy, is that what happens if you can't find the tin? Or you can't make sense of the tin? This brings me onto the first challenge... In that if it is legacy code, and there's no supporting documentation around how it works or what certain features are for, then it makes our lives as testers (and developers) difficult. We have to ask questions over what certain ...
Documenting my thoughts on life in the world of Testing