2024-01-03 20:00:00 +00:00
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title: >
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2024-02-07 20:01:19 +00:00
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How much refactoring should I be doing?
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2024-01-03 20:00:00 +00:00
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pubDate: 2023-09-17
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permalink: >-
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2024-02-07 20:01:19 +00:00
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archive/2023/09/17/how-much-refactoring-should-i-be-doing
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2024-01-03 20:00:00 +00:00
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tags:
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2024-02-07 20:01:19 +00:00
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- software-development
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- test-driven-development
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- automated-testing
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- refactoring
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2024-01-03 20:00:00 +00:00
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---
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I watched a webinar recently, and one of the panellists asked, "How much refactoring should I be doing?".
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The reply was, "More than you're doing now.".
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It was quite tongue-in-cheek, but I agree that, in general, code isn't refactored enough.
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One main reason is a fear of introducing regressions, and to avoid that, you need a good automated test suite.
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If you break the existing functionality whilst refactoring, you want the test suite to fail so you can identify and fix the regression.
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If the test suite passes, you can release the new code.
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How many tests and how much coverage do you need? There's no specfic answer - enough for you to be confident everything still works.
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