refactoring

software development

Paying Down Your Technical Debt

Every software project I've ever worked on has accrued technical debt [http://martinfowler.com/bliki/TechnicalDebt.html] over time: > Technical Debt is a wonderful metaphor developed by Ward Cunningham [http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?TechnicalDebt] to help us think about this problem. In this metaphor, doing

By Jeff Atwood ·
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code quality

Code Smaller

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few years, you’ve probably heard about the game Katamari Damacy. The gameplay consists of little more than rolling stuff up into an ever-increasing ball of stuff. That’s literally all you do. You start by rolling up small

By Jeff Atwood ·
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refactoring

Code Smells

I’m often asked why the book Refactoring isn’t included in my recommended developer reading list. Although I own the book, and I’ve read it twice, I felt it was too prescriptive – if you see (x), then you must do (y). Any programmer worth his or her salt

By Jeff Atwood ·
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visual studio 2005

Smart Tags and Sane Keyboard Shortcuts

I constantly rename variables. It’s probably the single most frequent refactoring activity I do. And that’s why I love Visual Studio 2005’s built-in Smart Tags feature. If you’re not familiar with smart tags, check out K. Scott Allen’s post; he has some nice screenshots illustrating

By Jeff Atwood ·
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refactoring

Programming for Luddites

There was much handwringing last week when Somasegar announced what we already knew: VB.NET 2005 will not have refactoring. This resulted in a few emotional outbursts: We don’t need toys like [the] MY [namespace], we need working tool like Refactoring!! How can Microsoft refuse us those magical software

By Jeff Atwood ·
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