Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code

Foreword

“Refactoring” was conceived in Smalltalk circles, but it wasn’t long before it found its way into other programming language camps. Because refactoring is integral to framework development, the term comes up quickly when “frameworkers” talk about their craft. It comes up when they refine their class hierarchies and when they rave about how many lines of code they were able to delete. Frameworkers know that a framework won’t be right the first time around—it must evolve as they gain experience. They also know that the code will be read and modified more frequently than it will be written. The key to keeping code readable and modifiable is refactoring—for frameworks, in particular, but also for software in general.

So, what’s the problem? ...