Luke Melia

personal

December 3, 2005

Refactoring vs. Restructuring

In the testdrivendevelopment group, Martin Fowler recently wrote:

Making big changes where a system is broken for a while is restructuring. Restructuring is a Good Thing, but it isn’t refactoring. Restructuring is something I did a lot, till I saw how Kent refactored his code: taking steps that were laughably small. I noticed he went faster, tended not to get into trouble, and if a test broke he knew quickly and could use diff debugging to help fix it fast.

Small steps are the essence of Refactoring and also of TDD. Most people should try smaller steps than they currently do.

This rings true, and I like the distinction between the terms restructuring and refactoring.

One Response to “Refactoring vs. Restructuring”

  1. monica chimed in:

    restructuring oop is called refactoring

Leave a Reply

LukeMelia.com created 1999. ··· Luke Melia created 1976. ··· Live With Passion!