daily-email: add 2023-09-17

How much refactoring should I be doing?

src/content/daily-email/2023-09-17.md

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