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Refactoring in Ruby
book

Refactoring in Ruby

by William C. Wake, Kevin Rutherford
October 2009
Intermediate to advanced
288 pages
5h 2m
English
Addison-Wesley Professional
Content preview from Refactoring in Ruby

Chapter 2. The Refactoring Cycle

In this chapter, we’ll define refactoring and code smells. Then we’ll look at the fundamental cycle of how to improve code with refactoring. Rules for simple design will tell us when we’ve done enough. We’ll close with a look at how refactoring is a key part of test-driven development.

What Is Refactoring?

Refactoring is the art of safely improving the design of existing code. In Refactoring [14], Martin Fowler describes it thus:

“Refactoring is the process of changing a software system in such a way that it does not alter the external behavior of the code yet improves its internal structure.”

This has a few implications:

Refactoring does not include just any changes in a system: Although refactoring should ...

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