Start

A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct.

from Manual of Muad'Dib by the Princess Irulan

extracted from Dune, by Frank Herbert

In the next weeks I'll be publishing a series of articles about a new project that I'm starting. Actually, I started this project once already, but I didn't like the path it was taking, so I'm restarting it.

The new system will replace the current EVOLUI.COM code base. Why rewrite a system that is in production for 8/9 years and that works reasonably well? There are several reasons actually.

The first reason is code rot: the current system is spread across 3 code bases (called internally E1 through E3). E1 was the first stab (who would guess, right?), and grew organically inside the company, without much planning, and coded by several programmers. E2 added a better management interface, and E3 added a new LMS and forum system.

A lot has changed in the last 8 years. And my inexperience in certain topics shows by the lack of proper tests and documentation. Also, it has grown to 850 Perl packages. Yes, eight hundred and fifty packages. I expect that more than half of those are no longer in active use.

The second, and more important reason, is that the new business requirements require a deep restructuring of the code, but given that we don't have a decent test suite, it would be madness to change stuff in one of those 850 packages.

The way I see it, I can write the new system properly, using a test-driven methodology, making sure that all the business logic is properly tested.

I'm not starting from scratch, I plan to reuse certain small but critical parts of the old system, but going over them to add tests and documentation.

The failed attempt was called E4, so this new version will be called E5.

I plan to cover the following topics (not sure of the order yet):

• source control, and ticketing systems;
• project directory layout;
• documentation techniques;
• business layer techniques;
• databases used and ORM layers;
• web frameworks;
• template systems;
• logging;
• smoke testing;
• deployment.

Hope you enjoy the ride.