Monday, May 5, 2003

Cringley: Refactoring is bad? In Robert Cringley's second of two columns on open source, he makes this statement: "Cleaning up code" is a terrible thing. Redesigning WORKING code into different WORKING code (also known as refactoring) is terrible. The reason is that once you touch WORKING code, it becomes NON-WORKING code, and the changes you make (once you get it working again) will never be known. It is basically a programmer’s ego trip and nothing else. Cleaning up code, which generally does not occur in nature, is a prime example of amateur Open Source software. I don't understand what he means here. I'm trying not to take this out of context, but I think he is really saying that refactoring is bad, and that programmers should get the design right the first time or else... Unfortunately, that just doesn't happen. Refactoring is a good thing. We don't build programs like we build houses, where the design is completed long before the construction. Programming is an iterative process, where there are small rapid iterations during development, and larger iterations between releases. I bet he gets lots of responses like mine. 10:13:05 AM