Refactoring: Ruby Edition

Chapter 12. Big Refactorings

The preceding chapters present the individual “moves” of refactoring. What is missing is a sense of the whole “game.” You are refactoring to some purpose, not just to avoid making progress (at least usually you are refactoring to some purpose). What does the whole game look like?

The Nature of the Game

One thing you’ll surely notice in what follows is that the steps aren’t nearly as carefully spelled out as in the previous refactorings. That’s because the situations change so much in the big refactorings. We can’t tell you exactly what to do, because we don’t know exactly what you’ll be seeing when you do it. When you are adding a parameter to a method, the mechanics are clear because the scope is clear. When you ...