Chipping away on a program

Tuesday, January 4th, 2005 | Development

… or Refactoring: Improving the design of existing code. With refactoring being the buzzword of the day who can afford not to take a gander at the promised land?

Now that may seem like a rather biased introduction, that was indeed what I was going for, however, I have used refactoring for a while, but I have never looked at any literary works on the matter and I thought it was time to pick up Fowler’s book. While it displays a lot of different methods for refactoring I can’t help having the feeling of being talked down to all the way through the book. It is as if Fowler and Beck (who in parts co-authored chapters) have this condescending notion of yeah, yeah, you might have your fancy design model, but this is how software really survives.

While refactoring may provide the means to extend the longevity of your code, I find the picture they paint is overly pink. They are enamoured by their own techniques, fair enough. I guess I just look for more objectivity in books.

All that said then if you are developing object-oriented programs in this day and age you should read the book, if nothing else to see how the refactoring craze started.

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