Refactoring Quickly, Safely, and Easily

The React Show

Refactoring can be dangerous, to your program and to your health. In this episode we discuss techniques to enable safe and healthy refactoring methods.
Show Notes

• Story time
  • (Thomas) I used to have delusions of grandeur about my refactoring ability
  • Austin recent project
• Purpose: to make the code better
• The challenge, how to do it so that:
  • You don’t break things unintentionally
  • You don’t get mired in the details and unable to move forward
  • It doesn’t take forever
• Method
  • Code is the way it is for a reason
  • Incremental
    • Keep a working version
    • Develop in parallel
  • Contracts
    • Don’t break contracts until you have a working replacement
    • Contracts are:
      • between input and output
      • functions
      • components
      • interfaces
      • libraries
  • Bottom-up
    • Don’t worry about code duplication until the end
    • Avoid “second-system” effect
  • Try to understand why the original system was created the way it was, don’t assume you know better, even if you do
• Story time
  • I’m working on a large refactoring project involving the inventory system
  • No down-time, must be 100% accurate
  • I’m building it:
    • In parallel with the existing system until it proves to be a worthy replacement
    • Incremental, developing and deploying many smaller pieces along the way
    • NOT as one large project that gets deployed all at once

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