A characterization test is a means to describe (characterize) the actual behaviour of an existing piece of software, and therefore protect existing behaviour of legacy code against unintended changes via automated testing.

In this talk I will share my experience from a project where we automatically generated fast running characterization tests based on existing slow running integration tests. The characterization tests helped us do a major redesign of a core calculation module in an insurance system without breaking existing functionality.

All good developers love writing code, but quite few of us take any pleasure in reading it. However, reading code has a lot of positive effects not many people are aware of. In this talk, I will tell you why and how you should use code reading to improve your coding skills.