Eight. Breakthrough

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The returns from refactoring are not linear. Usually there is a marginal return for a small effort, and the small improvements add up. They fight entropy, and they are the frontline protection against a fossilized legacy. But some of the most important insights come abruptly and send a shock through the project.

Slowly but surely, the team assimilates knowledge and crunches it into a model. Deep models can emerge gradually through a sequence of small refactorings, an object at a time: a tweaked association here, a shifted responsibility there.

Often, though, continuous refactoring prepares the way for something less orderly. ...

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