# Defining Refactoring

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If someone says their code was broken for a couple days while they were refactoring, you can be pretty sure they were not refactoring
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* The term "refactoring" is often used very loosely by practitioners to mean any kind of code cleanup. 
* Refactoring is about applying small behavior-preserving steps and making a big change by stringing together a sequence of these behavior-preserving steps.
* During this process, code should NOT spend much time in a broken state. 

## **Refactoring (noun)**: 

a change made to the internal structure of software to make it easier to understand and cheaper to modify without changing observable behavior.

## **Refactoring (verb)**:

to restructure software by applying a series of refactorings without changing its observable behavior.

## **Restructuring (verb)**: 

a general term to mean any kind of reorganizing or cleaning up of a code base that includes refactoring.

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Refactoring is always done to make the code easier to understand and cheaper to modify.
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