Software Design: Tidy First?

Tidying: Canonical Order

Kent Beck's avatar
Kent Beck
Nov 28, 2025
∙ Paid

I’m thankful for your support of Tidy First. Here’s a tidying that I don’t think I’ve talked about before. If you’d like me to give a talk to your team or organization, please:

int x, y
…
int y, x

What’s going on here? X is before y in the first line. That makes sense. Is there some difference in the second line that makes y come before x?

One basic princip…

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