Refactoring Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Refactoring - Essay Example This is where refactoring will come in handy. Refactoring is a method of altering the code of a software in various ways so it can easily be understood and the cost of modifying the code will be minimal. Refactoring does not change the observable behavior of the program. All changes are done internally just for the purpose of making the code more flexible and reusable. Maintaining the program's observable behavior is crucial to refactoring. Automated testing for each aspect of the software can be done to ensure the consistency of the observable behavior of the program. Refactoring reduces the degradation of an application over time by helping the developers easily maintain it. It is like cleaning up the program's code. It also makes the program easier to understand in the long run. Since one of the principles of refactoring is for it to be done in small steps, it can help the developer find bugs after testing each small step. And since you can easily find bugs, the time spent fixing them would be lesser. Thus, it will allow for more additional features to be added in the program. Refactoring, however, may not be applicable to all program codes. If a code seems to be a total mess, really difficult to understand and has a lot of bugs, then it might be better to rewrite the whole thing than just refactoring it.