Acceptable Upgrades -Eric Saxby | Code BEAM America 2025

Name: Acceptable Upgrades -Eric Saxby | Code BEAM America 2025
Uploaded: 2025-12-25T14:00:03Z
Description: Acceptable Upgrades -Eric Saxby | Code BEAM America 2025 [Acceptable Upgrades -Eric Saxby | Code BEAM America 2025] Comments welcome! View the code-sync tag for more Code Sync talks!

CodeSync · December 25, 2025, 2:00pm

This talk was recorded at Code BEAM America in March 2025. If you’re curious about our upcoming event, check https://codebebeameurope.com
How do you upgrade a legacy application written around a legacy database—databases designed with best practices from the 90s, with UML looking somewhere between abstract expressionism and piles of spaghetti? …But keep the tests small and understandable, please!

In my experience, people write tests in 3 cases: they’re too stubborn not to; their problems are too complex to solve without them; or their setup is so understandable that there’s no reason not to. When working on large untested applications, it’s very easy to skip tests—there’s too much precedent to want to slow down and fight against the current.

Here, I will share patterns and experiments that help to write tests faster—and show that with good tooling you can fight upstream to make it so that you can maintain systems and update them with confidence.
Let’s keep in touch!

Comments welcome! View the code-sync tag for more Code Sync talks!