When do you refactor code? [closed]

Answer 1

We found small refactorings are best done while we were working on a bit of code - do what's required, preferably paired.

For bigger things, we had a Technical Debt section on the wall - if you spotted something and didn't have the time to address it, or it was going to take some discussion to solve, you'd add it to the wall and they would be scheduled for future iterations (or when free time cropped up).

Answer 2

To look at our company, we have decided that our upcoming application release is mostly dedicated to performance optimizations rather than new functionality. This was something we felt was needed and also was requested by some clients. Therefore we have spent a lot of time identifying performance bottlenecks in our app and reviewing code and refactoring it to make things run faster.

So in our case we did it because management approved us doing it for this new release, because we showed to them how much performance improvement could be gained.

Answer 3

Following DRY principles vehemently will often be a trigger for me to refactor.

Answer 4

I find I refactor when revisiting code (presumably to add/extend functionality) more than 3 months after it was written.

If it takes me more than 2 minutes to discern what a chunk of code is doing, I'll break it apart to make it more immediately understandable (or just add some more comments.)

Answer 5

Refactor when needed:

• when you need a better understanding of the code you are working on (pairing often helps here), examples are: renaming, method extraction etc.
• when the current design doesn't allow for a 'clean' change: at this point you can actually argue with your manager on a value basis (e.g. what is this new feature worth to the project)

Answer 6

I work in a large system, so I only change things I have to. It is easy to have bad side effects to changes.

I will refactor sections of code that are performing poorly, not working properly, or needs new functionality.

I never just decide to fix things, I would never be done. if it works, and no one is asking for changes or complaining about problems, move on. life is too short to fix everything.