Introduction to Refactoring
The key strategy in achieving The Cardinal Rule of Software Evolution is refactoring, which Martin Fowler defines as "a change made to the internal structure of the software to make it easier to understand and cheaper to modify without changing its observable behavior" (Fowler 1999). The word "refactoring" in modern programming grew out of Larry Constantine's original use of the word "factoring" in structured programming, which referred to decomposing a program into its constituent parts as much as possible (Yourdon and Constantine 1979).
Reasons to Refactor
Sometimes code degenerates under maintenance, and sometimes the code just wasn't very good in the first place. In either case, here are some warning signs —sometimes ...
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