In this episode of Book Overflow, Carter and Nathan discuss Tidy First? by Kent Beck. Join them as they discuss when you should prioritize tidying your code over feature improvements, what tidying means, and the Beck's thoughts on software and the time value of money! -- Books Mentioned in this Episode -- Note: As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. ---------------------------------------------------------- Tidy First?: A Personal Exercise in Empirical Software Design by Kent Beck https://amzn.to/40uOEtL (paid link) Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code (2nd Edition) by Martin Fowler https://amzn.to/3C9d5mq (paid link) Building Evolutionary Architectures: Automated Software Governance by Neal Ford, Rebecca Parsons, Patrick Kua, Pramod Sadalage https://amzn.to/4fmoIVC (paid link) A Philosophy of Software Design, 2nd Edition by John Ousterhout https://amzn.to/4ecmYgv (paid link) The Practice of Programming by Brian Kernighan, Rob Pike https://amzn.to/4fuMP4b (paid link) ---------------- 00:00 Intro 03:14 About the Book 05:41 Thoughts on the Book 11:17 Techniques and Approaches for Tidying (Part 1) 36:20 How to prioritize and manage tidying tasks (Part 2) 47:30 Optionality, Reversibility and The Philosophy of Tidying (Part 3) 01:05:38 Final Thoughts ---------------- Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5kj6DLCEWR5nHShlSYJI5L Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/book-overflow/id1745257325 X: https://x.com/bookoverflowpod Carter on X: https://x.com/cartermorgan Nathan's Functionally Imperative: www.functionallyimperative.com ---------------- Book Overflow is a podcast for software engineers, by software engineers dedicated to improving our craft by reading the best technical books in the world. Join Carter Morgan and Nathan Toups as they read and discuss a new technical book each week! The full book schedule and links to every major podcast player can be found at https://www.bookoverflow.io