Working on a legacy project can be a chore. Fighting the same old problems over and over again, adding new features takes ages, seems like every time we fix one bug, we uncover three others. Sounds like wishful thinking, but I know it can be better.

Legacy code has many definitions. It is code without tests. It is code written by someone else. It is code written X time ago. It is obsolete code that is difficult to replace with newer code. It is code that has no documentation. It is all of these things.

Within the TDD community there’s an advice saying that we shouldn’t mock types we don’t own. I believe it is good advice and do my best to follow it. Of course, there are people who say that we shouldn’t mock in the first place. Whichever TDD camp you’re in I think this “don’t mock what you don’t own” advice has an even better advice hidden in it. An advice that people often overlook because they see the word “mock” in it and go full berserk.

Contributing to open source projects has many benefits — you learn and you teach, you can make friends or find business partners, you might get a chance to travel. Even have a keynote at a conference, like Gary did.