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Refactoring is about improving the design of existing code. It is the process of changing a software system in such a way that it does not alter the external behavior of the code, yet improves its internal structure. With refactoring you can even take a bad design and rework it into a good one. This book offers a thorough discussion of the principles of refactoring, including where to spot opportunities for refactoring, and how to set up the required tests. There is also a catalog of more than 40 proven refactorings with details as to when and why to use the refactoring, step by step instructions for implementing it, and an example illustrating how it works The book is written using Java as its principle language, but the ideas are applicable to any OO language.
List of contents
- Preface
- 1. Refactoring, a First Example
- 2. Principles in Refactoring
- 3. Bad Smells in Code
- 4. Building Tests
- 5. Toward a Catalog of Refactorings
- 6. Composing Methods
- 7. Moving Features between Objects
- 8. Organizing Data
- 9. Simplifying Conditional Expressions
- 10. Making Method Calls Simpler
- 11. Dealing with Generalization
- 12. Big Refactorings
- 13. Refactoring, Reuse, and Reality
- 14. Refactoring Tools
- 15. Putting It All Together
About the author
Martin Fowler is Chief Scientist at ThoughtWorks. He describes himself as “an author, speaker, consultant and general loud-mouth on software development.” Fowler concentrates on designing enterprise software: exploring what makes a good design and what practices are needed to create one.
Summary
Martin Fowler’s guide to reworking bad code into well-structured code
Refactoring improves the design of existing code and enhances software maintainability, as well as making existing code easier to understand. Original Agile Manifesto signer and software development thought leader, Martin Fowler, provides a catalog of refactorings that explains why you should refactor; how to recognize code that needs refactoring; and how to actually do it successfully, no matter what language you use.
- Refactoring principles: understand the process and general principles of refactoring
- Code smells: recognize “bad smells” in code that signal opportunities to refactor
- Application improvement: quickly apply useful refactorings to make a program easier to comprehend and change
- Building tests: writing good tests increases a programmer’s effectiveness
- Moving features: an important part of refactoring is moving elements between contexts
- Data structures: a collection of refactorings to organize data, an important role in programs
- Conditional Logic: use refactorings to make conditional sections easier to understand
- APIs: modules and their functions are the building blocks of our software, and APIs are the joints that we use to plug them together
- Inheritance: it is both very useful and easy to misuse, and it’s often hard to see the misuse until it’s in the rear-view mirror---refactorings can fix the misuse
Examples are written in JavaScript, but you shouldn’t find it difficult to adapt the refactorings to whatever language you are currently using as they look mostly the same in different languages.
"Whenever you read [Refactoring
], it’s time to read it again. And if you haven’t read it yet, please do before writing another line of code." –David Heinemeier Hansson, Creator of Ruby on Rails, Founder & CTO at Basecamp
“Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.” –M. Fowler (1999)
