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Your Code as a Crime Scene, Second Edition: Use Forensic Techniques to Arrest Defects, Bottlenecks, and Bad Design in Your Programs
Jack the Ripper and legacy codebases have more in common than you'd think. Inspired by forensic psychology methods, you can apply strategies to identify problems in your existing code, assess refactoring direction, and understand how your team influences the software architecture. With its unique blend of criminal psychology and code analysis, Your Code as a Crime Scene arms you with the techniques you need to take on any codebase, no matter what programming language you use.
Software development might well be the most challenging task humanity ever attempted. As systems scale up, they also become increasingly complex, expensive to maintain, and difficult to reason about. We can always write more tests, try to refactor, and even fire up a debugger to understand complex coding constructs. That's a great starting point, but you can do so much better.
Take inspiration from forensic psychology techniques to understand and improve existing code. Visualize codebases via a geographic profile from commit data to find development hotspots, prioritize technical debt, and uncover hidden dependencies. Get data and develop strategies to make the business case for larger refactorings. Detect and fix organizational problems from the vantage point of the software architecture to remove bottlenecks for the teams.
The original Your Code as a Crime Scene from 2014 pioneered techniques for understanding the intersection of people and code. This new edition reflects a decade of additional experience from hundreds of projects. Updated techniques, novel case studies, and extensive new material adds to the strengths of this cult classic.
Change how you view software development and join the hunt for better code!
What You
You need to be comfortable reading code. You also need to use Git (or Subversion, Mercurial or similar version-control tool).
Software development might well be the most challenging task humanity ever attempted. As systems scale up, they also become increasingly complex, expensive to maintain, and difficult to reason about. We can always write more tests, try to refactor, and even fire up a debugger to understand complex coding constructs. That's a great starting point, but you can do so much better.
Take inspiration from forensic psychology techniques to understand and improve existing code. Visualize codebases via a geographic profile from commit data to find development hotspots, prioritize technical debt, and uncover hidden dependencies. Get data and develop strategies to make the business case for larger refactorings. Detect and fix organizational problems from the vantage point of the software architecture to remove bottlenecks for the teams.
The original Your Code as a Crime Scene from 2014 pioneered techniques for understanding the intersection of people and code. This new edition reflects a decade of additional experience from hundreds of projects. Updated techniques, novel case studies, and extensive new material adds to the strengths of this cult classic.
Change how you view software development and join the hunt for better code!
What You
You need to be comfortable reading code. You also need to use Git (or Subversion, Mercurial or similar version-control tool).
- GenresSoftware
520 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 1, 2024
9 people are currently reading
38 people want to read
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
October 3, 2025
We read Your Code as a Crime Scene in my Engineering Book Group and, overall, had a positive experience.
A colleague jokingly called the title "clickbait," which made me laugh — and honestly, it’s a little true. (I might not have picked it up otherwise.) The crime scene metaphor is strong at the start, almost evoking the feel of an episode or two of Mindhunter. But as the book goes on, that theme fades, and the connection to crime scene investigation becomes less prominent. That’s probably for the best — at times, the metaphor felt a bit forced or heavy-handed.
That said, the book offers some valuable insights and thought-provoking perspectives on software development, software maintenance, and project management. It raises good ideas for consideration, making it a worthwhile read for engineering teams and individuals alike.
A colleague jokingly called the title "clickbait," which made me laugh — and honestly, it’s a little true. (I might not have picked it up otherwise.) The crime scene metaphor is strong at the start, almost evoking the feel of an episode or two of Mindhunter. But as the book goes on, that theme fades, and the connection to crime scene investigation becomes less prominent. That’s probably for the best — at times, the metaphor felt a bit forced or heavy-handed.
That said, the book offers some valuable insights and thought-provoking perspectives on software development, software maintenance, and project management. It raises good ideas for consideration, making it a worthwhile read for engineering teams and individuals alike.
Displaying 1 of 1 review