Posted by ELINTPimp on 08/24/07 13:55

On Aug 24, 12:59 am, Sanders Kaufman <bu...@kaufman.net> wrote:
> rf wrote:
> > "Sanders Kaufman" <bu...@kaufman.net> wrote in message
> >> Oh, I get it. It's a politically-correct, bidness-safe way of saying you
> >> did something fundamentally wrong and have to re-design the whole damned
> >> thing.
>
> > No it is most definately not. If you had read and understood the above
> > article you would know that.
>
> > While you are looking again at the article you may wish to follow the link
> > to Extreme Programming, of which refactoring is an integral component.
>
> > This is not, of course, programming 101. It's many levels above that.
>
> Yeah - so advanced that it leaves the programming world entirely, and
> enters that of PC bidness-speak. Bleccchh.
>
> I'm a code-monkey, and I like it.

Sanders, I respect where you are coming from as wanting to be a "code-
monkey" and remove yourself from the "PC bidness-speak", as I've been
that way (and continue to be that way to some extent). There is a big
difference, however, in adopting sound best practices in software
engineering and "running with the crowd", as it were, using terms we
all love to hate like Web 2.0 and the like.

Refactoring your code doesn't always mean you screwed up in the design
or within the actual logic of the code. Most of the time, it has to
deal with improving your code to meet new business requirements. A
good (and dramatic) example is if you started with a very small
project that used OO, but not an MVC or similar framework. Later,
your customer tells you that their business has expanded and their
presence on the Internet must grow accordingly and now the customer is
needing something that is well beyond the original specifications of
the web application you created. Then starts the refactoring
process. Refactoring could also deal not just with your business
logic, but also database schema and aspects therein.

I recommend to all that hasn't already read them, to check out books
by Martin Fowler as a starter into this subject.

The term "refactoring" can be considered a label, really, similar to
giving a design pattern a name. It gives technical people a common
language so they can work together. Just because your PHB may pickup
on the term, and use it (probably incorrectly), doesn't mean it's
garbage and does not relate to a software engineer.

Extreme programming uses the term refactoring, but even though it may
be in the index of the book, doesn't mean they are strictly related.

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