When do you refactor code? [closed]

Answer 1

• As part of original development (red/green/refactor)
• When suggested by a code reviewer
• When we've noticed a design pain-point
• When making another change, if the refactoring is low impact, i.e. typically not affecting any other files.

If it affects the public API, I generally like to make the refactoring a single source code commit which doesn't change behaviour (and then build new behaviour into another commit). If it affects other projects too, there needs to be consensus over it and I would want to get permission to change their code to go in the same refactoring commit.

Answer 2

Insufficiently often, thus building up technical debt.

Sad, but so.

Do as I say, not as the team I work on does.

Answer 3

Code review processes often help with this. If I touch some code, it gets reviewed, reviewer asks, "why did you do it this way?", I say, "I had to because of (insert ugliness here)". This is a sign that the code should be refactored right after the review is done.

Answer 4

I refactor when I'm fixing a bug or adding a feature and the process of refactoring makes the code easier to read and easier to maintain.