Defining Refactoring

If someone says their code was broken for a couple days while they were refactoring, you can be pretty sure they were not refactoring

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.

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

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

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

Last updated 11 months ago

If someone says their code was broken for a couple days while they were refactoring, you can be pretty sure they were not refactoring

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.

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

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

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

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

Last updated 11 months ago