Working Effectively with Legacy Code
E32705
Working Effectively with Legacy Code is a widely respected software engineering book by Michael Feathers that teaches practical techniques for understanding, testing, and safely modifying existing codebases.
All labels observed (1)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| Working Effectively with Legacy Code canonical | 2 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T249049 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Working Effectively with Legacy Code Context triple: [Addison-Wesley, hasPublished, Working Effectively with Legacy Code]
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A.
Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code
"Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code" is a seminal software engineering book by Martin Fowler that systematically defines refactoring techniques to improve code structure while preserving behavior.
-
B.
Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship
Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship is a highly influential software engineering book by Robert C. Martin that teaches principles and practices for writing readable, maintainable, and high-quality code.
-
C.
The Mythical Man-Month
The Mythical Man-Month is a classic software engineering book by Fred Brooks that explores the challenges of large-scale software projects and famously argues that adding manpower to a late project makes it later.
-
D.
Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software
"Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software" is a seminal software engineering book by Eric Evans that introduces the domain-driven design approach for managing complexity in large, business-focused software systems.
-
E.
Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software
Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software is a seminal software engineering book by the "Gang of Four" that catalogues foundational object-oriented design patterns widely used in software development.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Working Effectively with Legacy Code Target entity description: Working Effectively with Legacy Code is a widely respected software engineering book by Michael Feathers that teaches practical techniques for understanding, testing, and safely modifying existing codebases.
-
A.
Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code
"Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code" is a seminal software engineering book by Martin Fowler that systematically defines refactoring techniques to improve code structure while preserving behavior.
-
B.
Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship
Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship is a highly influential software engineering book by Robert C. Martin that teaches principles and practices for writing readable, maintainable, and high-quality code.
-
C.
The Mythical Man-Month
The Mythical Man-Month is a classic software engineering book by Fred Brooks that explores the challenges of large-scale software projects and famously argues that adding manpower to a late project makes it later.
-
D.
Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software
"Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software" is a seminal software engineering book by Eric Evans that introduces the domain-driven design approach for managing complexity in large, business-focused software systems.
-
E.
Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software
Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software is a seminal software engineering book by the "Gang of Four" that catalogues foundational object-oriented design patterns widely used in software development.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (49)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
book
ⓘ
software engineering book ⓘ |
| approach |
example-driven
ⓘ
practical ⓘ |
| author | Michael Feathers ⓘ |
| countryOfPublication |
United States of America
ⓘ
surface form:
United States
|
| emphasizes |
importance of tests as safety net
ⓘ
small, incremental refactorings ⓘ understanding code behavior before change ⓘ |
| field |
refactoring
ⓘ
software engineering ⓘ software maintenance ⓘ |
| focusesOn |
incrementally improving design
ⓘ
risk reduction in code changes ⓘ working with untested code ⓘ |
| format |
ebook
ⓘ
print ⓘ |
| genre |
non-fiction
ⓘ
technical literature ⓘ |
| hasConcept |
characterization test
ⓘ
seams in code ⓘ sprout class ⓘ sprout method ⓘ wrap method ⓘ |
| influenced |
modern refactoring practices
ⓘ
software craftsmanship movement ⓘ |
| intendedAudience |
software architects
ⓘ
software developers ⓘ software engineers ⓘ technical leads ⓘ |
| language | English ⓘ |
| publicationYear | 2004 ⓘ |
| publisher | Prentice Hall ⓘ |
| recognizedAs |
classic in software engineering literature
ⓘ
standard reference on legacy code handling ⓘ |
| teaches |
techniques for adding tests to legacy code
ⓘ
techniques for safely modifying code ⓘ techniques for understanding existing codebases ⓘ ways to break dependencies to enable testing ⓘ |
| topic |
characterization tests
ⓘ
dependency breaking techniques ⓘ design for testability ⓘ incremental change ⓘ legacy code ⓘ object-oriented design ⓘ refactoring techniques ⓘ safe code modification ⓘ test seams ⓘ unit testing ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: Working Effectively with Legacy Code Description of subject: Working Effectively with Legacy Code is a widely respected software engineering book by Michael Feathers that teaches practical techniques for understanding, testing, and safely modifying existing codebases.
Referenced by (2)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.