Before your Code Mildews — Refactor!
In my last post, See the Code, Be the Code, I compared agile development to the game of golf. But how does one truly “see the code” as the software grows in size and complexity? On one hand, you could ignore the fact that software is developed over many iterations and try to build a very complex system all at once that does everything under the sun, or you can keep the design simple and focus on the iteration at hand knowing that as our understanding increases we will refactor the code.
Refactoring is the process by which you modify the behavior and appearance of the code to ensure that code is up-to-date with current system requirements or changes in the system environment. It gives the development team an opportunity to continuously improve code quality for long term readability and maintainability. The easier the code is to follow, the less time it will take for current and future development teams to make changes as the system matures. It can also help the development team take advantages of improvements to existing frameworks and other software used to develop the application. These improvements can be realized through better performance and reusability of existing and future code. In short, it helps keep your code from become stale and mildewy.
Read more »
