Recently I was given some legacy code in a monolithic app to take a peek at to work on how to problem solve with old code.
What I learned most from this exercise is that it is really easy to get lost in the code. I found myself in parts of the code that didn't seem to have anything to do with the questions at hand because I was trying to figure out what direction is this issue trying to point me in? Here are some tips that helped me to focus in on the issue at hand.
- Try and use the search function in your code editor to search possible key terms that might be used in specific files
- Break down the issue into plain terms. This helped me to be able to focus on the basics of what the issue is asking of me.
- The Schema! What is the structure of the app? What are common terms that are used throughout? (Granted the app I was looking at was pretty small so I am not sure how scalable this is for larger apps with a thousand plus lines of schema!)
- The gemfile! What technology is this app using? Am I familiar with this code? If not, can I use tip 1 to figure out how this code is being used?
I hope these tips were helpful and if you have any tips for me please leave them in the comments below!
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