SE Radio 554: Adam Tornhill on Behavioral Code Analysis

Adam Tornhill, founder and CTO of CodeScene,
joins host Giovanni Asproni to speak about behavioral code
analysis. Behavioral code analysis is a set of practical
techniques aimed at identifying patterns in how a development
organization interacts with the codebase they're building. It can
be used to prioritize technical debt to maximize return on
investment; to identify communication and team-coordination
bottlenecks in code; to drive refactorings guided by data from
how the system evolves; and to detect code quality problems
before they become maintenance issues. The episode starts with a
broad description of the techniques, providing some examples from
real projects, and ends with suggestions on how to get started
with applying them. During the conversation, Adam and Giovanni
touch on a set of related topics, including the applicability of
the techniques to legacy, green-, and brown-field projects;
ethical and privacy implications; and the importance of context
when judging code quality.