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Selling Management (or Yourself) on Refactoring

One of the toughest things about refactoring is getting people to buy into it. Management tends to frown on changing code that “works” regardless of how dreadfully bad it may be. There is an inherent myopia that seems to afflict all but the most seasoned of coders: “If it ain't broke, don't fix it” is the common response you'll hear when suggesting that a piece of code would benefit greatly from internal improvements. Another is: “Can I sell that to the customer?”—a rhetorical question meant to point out that the customer would not even be aware of any internal refactorings that you, in your compulsive zeal, might wish to implement. The fundamental point that both of these arguments miss is that ...