Tidy First?
by Kent Beck · first published 2023
47% recommend35% neutral18% critical
Why HN recommends it
Short, practical guide to small structural code changes and when to make them, framed by cost-benefit thinking about software design. Suggested for working engineers and anyone wanting a quick, opinionated read.
Common criticism: Some find it overlaps heavily with existing refactoring books
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
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Yes. Kent Beck's recent book Tidy First <https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/tidy-first/978109815123...>
on “Simplicity” ↗…environment where they're working with OOP languages/frameworks. There are plenty of Ruby/Rails shops out there still. At the very least I love the mentality that this book teaches and often recommend Tidy First by Kent Beck at the same time.
on “99 Bottles of OOP now available in Python” ↗…build and compose abstractions. One of those books where every sentence is gold. My only wish that the book wasn't tied to Clojure (most of the book is applicable to any language, despite the title). Tidy First? by Kent Beck. How and when to make structural changes (refactoring, architecture, paying down tech debt) vs behavioral changes (new features, bug fixes). You need both, and you can use economic theory…
on “Ask HN: What were the best books you read this year?” ↗…future self. It weighs you down and adds friction. And we tend to do a terrible job of predicting our future needs. Kent Beck does a great job discussing the costs of these tradeoffs in his recent book "Tidy First". It builds upon the YAGNI principle, but adds a level of cost analysis that should allow you to sell these ideas to the managerial level.
on “Wheel Reinventor’s Principles (2024)” ↗…series (7 books) by C. Ruocchio have the final book published this year. Dune vibe/A bit of Warhammer. "Simplicity" by Dave Thomas is in the same vein of "The Pragmatic Programmer". Worth a quick read. "Tidy First?" by Kent Beck is another one that's worth a quick read.
on “Ask HN: End of Year Book Recommendations” ↗…cute, full of incredibly quotable passages, and fun to read. I didn't spend enough time on them, though. A lot of the lessons I thought I'd learned left my brain like water through a sieve. Kent Beck, Tidy First?. This book helped me understand the economics of software through a new light. That was important to me, because during the time I spent as a Director of Software Engineering I was not given a budget…
on “Ask HN: What did you read in 2025?” ↗If you like this you might like the book: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/tidy-first/978109815123... Previous discussion: How I came to write “Tidy First?” tl;dr it took 18 years https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35246995 Tidy First? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38942400
on “Mastering Programming (2016)” ↗The top book imho is The Pragmatic Programer. Here some other recomendations - Designing Data-Intensive Applications - Tidy First?: A Personal Exercise in Empirical Software Design - A Philosophy of Software Design - Refactoring UI - The Software Engineer's Guidebook - https://blog.rstankov.com/programing-books/
on “Ask HN: What books should I read to improve as a software engineer?” ↗…Object-Oriented Analysis and Design with Applications (Booch et al.) and Object Thinking. They contrast each other quite a bit; having both perspectives is handy. Once you’re through all those, I recommend Tidy First (Beck), Implementation Patterns (Beck), and Test-Driven Development By Example (Beck). These three books of his provide an incredibly accessible view into better ways to code. If you’re anything like…
on “Ask HN: Any advice for success you would give to a Software Developer intern?” ↗> Kent Beck compares unwritten code with a financial option to buy something at a given price. From Kent's "Tidy, First?" Software creates value in two ways: What it does today The possibility of new things we can make it do tomorrow Unwritten code has no value. The code that is being written today, if it will…
on “The Cost Yagni Was Never About – By Kent Beck” ↗The tldr is actually "I'm Kent Beck and I'm rewriting _Structured Design_ with modern examples and calling it _Tidy First?_." Interesting idea, weak title. And reading this blog post it sounds like it's going to be a commiseration more than a solution.
on “How I came to write “Tidy First?” tl;dr it took 18 years” ↗…how we build and compose abstractions. Only wish that the title wasn't tied to the Clojure programming language (most of the book is applicable to any language despite the title) and was a bit longer. "Tidy First" is the first in a series by Kent Beck, a quick exposition on how to separate structural changes (architecture, paying down tech debt) from behavioral changes (new features, bug fixes). You need both,…
on “Ask HN: What books should I read to improve as a software engineer?” ↗Tidy first! Make the necessary change easy to make Then make the necessary change I’m paraphrasing Kent Beck
on “What 10k Hours of Coding Taught Me: Don't Ship Fast” ↗…the (current?) job done is only a small part of building a system. The fact is you have to maintain it or extract the embodied knowledge later, and that’s where no thought have not been given. In the Tidy First? book by Kent Beck, he explains that the value of software is both in its current behavior and the future possibilities that the structure provides. If there’s no future to worry about, LLMs may be a…
on “AI-assisted coding will change software engineering: hard truths” ↗…Ie, you can have a method that says very clearly and concisely what it does... vs making the reader scan through dozens or hundreds of lines of code to understand it all. Chapter 12 of Kent Beck's book Tidy First? is about exactly this.
on “LoC is a dumb metric for functions” ↗