Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code

By Martin Fowler, Kent Beck, Fowler Martin, et al.

Book Overview

Martin Fowler's guide to reworking bad code into well-structured code Refactoring improves the design of existing code and enhances software maintainability, as well as making existing code easier to understand. Original Agile Manifesto signer and software development thought leader, Martin Fowler, provides a catalog of refactorings that explains why you should refactor; how to recognize code that needs refactoring; and how to actually do it successfully, no matter what language you use. Refactoring principles: understand the process and general principles of refactoring Code smells: recognize "bad smells" in code that signal opportunities to refactor Application improvement: quickly apply useful refactorings to make a program easier to comprehend and change Building tests: writing good tests increases a programmer's effectiveness Moving features: an important part of refactoring is moving elements between contexts Data structures: a collection of refactorings to organize data, an important role in programs Conditional Logic: use refactorings to make conditional sections easier to understand APIs: modules and their functions are the building blocks of our software, and APIs are the joints that we use to plug them together Inheritance: it is both very useful and easy to misuse, and it's often hard to see the misuse until it's in the rear-view mirror---refactorings can fix the misuse Examples are written in JavaScript, but you shouldn't find it difficult to adapt the refactorings to whatever language you are currently using as they look mostly the same in different languages. "Whenever you read [Refactoring], it's time to read it again. And if you haven't read it yet, please do before writing another line of code." -David Heinemeier Hansson, Creator of Ruby on Rails, Founder & CTO at Basecamp "Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand." -M. Fowler (1999) This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0201485672
• ISBN13: 9780201485677
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
• Length: 464 Pages
• Weight: 2.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 7.6" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

Don't wait as long as I did

I've known about this book for over a year. Initially, I thought it was about re-engineering legacy systems. I don't do that, so I didn't give it much thought. Over the past year, I have stumbled across repeated references to this book. Everyone seems to cite it, and now I understand why. It's very easy to fall into 'analysis paralysis' when doing object design. A commonly heard complaint is "I have created 27 different class...

Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code

A little while back I was introduced to a word I had never heard before, Refactoring. I was told to get Martin Fowler's book and read it so I could gain a better understanding of what Refactoring was. Well folks, I would classify this book as a 'Hidden Treasure'. Although it is not a flashy or well known title, I believe its impact can be much deeper and long lasting than many of the mainstream, more popular technology books...

Don't just read it - buy it

One can read good books on a specific technology (COM, UML etc) or on specific programming languages or even on different approaches to software development (RUP, OPEN etc) but every now and then a true classic comes along. Like Design Patterns 4 years ago now refactoring comes along. Every serious OO developer should own both of these books. Get your hands on Refactoring if only to read chapter 3, which summarises all...

Should be part of every developer's toolkit

I spent seven years in the Smalltalk environment figuring (parts) of this stuff out for myself. You don't have to - buy Martin's book and shave at least a few years off the learning curve. Refactoring is an indispensable part of software development. Like it or not, whatever you write today will be "wrong" sometime in the future. You need to have techniques for transitioning to the "right" stuff. Refactoring provides you...

At least as important as Design Patterns. Buy it now.

It's a rare book that causes the reader to say: "This changes *everything*." The Design Patterns book is one such, Refactoring is another. The introductory chapters establish a clear theoretical and practical basis for the catalog of refactorings that make up the larger part of the text. Many of the examples are trivial, but then, many of the refactorings occur in simple situations. The more complex refactorings are...