What is "Chore at Last"?

 Chore at Last is a little bit like tidy first but what with different approach. Chore at Last means, before you create a PR or go live with a new feature you chore your code. The idea is to improve the code around the new feature or bug fix to prevent it from going tech debt. This step also includes the usage of common code analyzer tools like PMD or Sonar.

OK, a real world example. I just update a lib to the latest version. The new lib version was improved and has a little bit changes interface. The quest was to update to latest lib version. At this point I could stop and "solve" the JIRA ticket. But I realize that a service class that hides the lib, was not needed anymore. My chore last action was to remove this needless class. It reduces the code complexity and prevent tech debt.

Or you can compare with a craftsman who is cleaning up the work desk and store all there tools. It's not part of the product but still needed.

Do you think this would be banal, I know it isn't.

Code Quality 2024 : Introduction by Mirko Ebert

Code Quality – Quality Code is highly discussed, every company wants it, many developers have a huge amount of tips, tools, frameworks or new language that guaranteed quality software. If you want to dive in this deep sea you never will find it. I also started to write a nice blog article that describes my point of view to code quality. The article was almost done. But the I realize, at the end all these things are useless if you don’t know how to reach this quality code goal. Knowing the details is not sufficient.

 

So I decide it to describe and teach you code quality like the Golf Sidekick teach me to break 100 or how Ben Hogan teach me the golf swing with his book: “Ben Hogan's Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf”. 

In the following chapters I will describe you a simple and proven way to ensure code quality. Every developer can follow the way of code quality. This way will work for everybody, for every development team and for every IT company.