Techniques and Good Practices: Refactoring

Refactoring

Typically, if a system grows over time, its design tends to get messier and messier at the same time. This can be worse on a large team because the more people that are involved with building a system, the harder it is to keep it clean. However, if everybody on the team refactors continuously, there is a chance that the design will stay clean and easy to understand.

Why isn’t refactoring common?

Refactoring does not seem to be a common habit in (large) teams because:

• A lot of people still believe it will slow them down.
• Sometimes there is no refactoring tool support for the particular project available, which makes it much more difficult than it should be.
• The developers often fear being blamed for not developing any new functionality because they are busy refactoring.
• Most people are not trained to do refactoring properly. They do not know how, why, when, or where they should refactor, and they are scared of taking up the responsibility to do so.

Best

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