The Big Red Diff - Deleting 50k lines of code without destroying production

Welcome to the GlasgowJS March Meetup! We’ll be meeting on Tuesday 10th March, 18:30 at the The Boardwalk, Glasgow. We will have socialising and networking with your fellow JavaScript developers with drinks and pizza followed by a talk from Ian Gregson:

“Learning to love the big red diff - reflections on deleting 50k lines of code without destroying production”

“We all love a red diff, right? But what about when it’s tens of thousands of lines in the red?

In this talk I’ll share my experience of unpicking a whole service from our codebase. Spoiler: many more checklists than I expected.

Technical work was maybe 40% of the story. The rest was about making maps, telling the story, defending the reasons, worrying a bit, getting things in the right order.

I’ll walk through the journey from initial intuition to seeing the opportunity, to getting backing, to getting scared … all the way to the beautiful red diff.

This isn’t a “here’s the perfect framework” talk. It’s more of a reflection on my journey: what worked, what didn’t, and what I’d do differently. If you’re staring down a large refactoring, wrestling with technical debt, or just trying to figure out how to make ambitious architectural changes happen, maybe you’ll find something useful here.”

People with all levels of experience are welcome - from Senior developers to people who are just taking their first steps with JavaScript.

We are using Luma as our ticketing system for this event. Please RSVP on Luma: https://luma.com/scottishtechnologyclub - if you choose to RSVP on Meetup and share your email with us, then we will transfer your registration to the Luma system where you may get invites for future events.

​Supporters tickets with an optional and flexible contribution amount are available so that you can contribute to the running costs of the group.

Please RSVP so we have rough numbers for catering. Space is limited, so keep your RSVP status up to date if your plans change.

If you would like to speak or volunteer for future events then please get in touch via our speaking and volunteering form, or join our Discord.

​If travel costs are a barrier to attending, please let us know — we have adiversity and hardship fund.

Thank you to Glasgow City Council for supporting our meetup - we will be livestreaming on the Scottish Technology Club YouTube Channel.

If you want to contribute to running costs for the meetup group then you can support us on Patreon.