My presentation on JFall 2009 went very well, there was a big audience (they barely fit into the room) and there was lot's of interaction going on during the talk. People where asking critical questions and provided good comments.
The topic seemed to make people pretty enthusiastic. Especially the examples of a really complex method, the biggest method and a method with a lot of parameters.
In the presentation I answered the following two questions: 1) what is a 5-star system, and 2) how can I get one? The answer to the first question is: "a system that receives the highest rating in the TUVit Trusted Product Maintainability Certification". I explained what this certificate entails and how the complete procedure works (something which is also summarized over here).
The second question is answered by the following mantra: "make sure that your code is small, simple and specific".
If you cannot make your code small, simple and specific, take a step back and look at the abstract picture (the overall design) of your project. Why does this design disallow you to make your code small, simple and specific?
Can you model stuff differently? Is there a way to abstract over details that clutter your code? How can this type of functionality be grouped in a better way? Try to determine why the design (or your framework) is restricting you and solve that problem. The result will be a more maintainable system.
Naturally, these answers are just the core of the talk, a more complete overview of the presentation is provided by the Atos Application and Development blog (Dutch). For those interested, the slides can be found here.
All and all a nice experience, on to JSpring 2010!?
