refactor

My experience has been that teams which refactor effectively outperform similarly skilled teams who don't refactor by a very large margin.

Now you refactor those millions of classes to rely on a handful of classes to perform those common operations.

Now you've just made it easier to eventually refactor those few remaining classes into something nicer, cleaner, more efficient.

About 10% of the people will try to refactor something, and will end up trying to rewrite the entire app.

As part of that new feature refactor the base class and all existing subclasses if necessary.

I didn't know it was an option to 'refactor' such a big thing but the result is pretty convincing, both in terms of living conditions and cost.

On the flip side, you can also refactor that code quickly into more optimal patterns.

Finally, you may get one or two people who naturally know how to refactor well.

Ugly code will obscure deeper architectural issues, increase defect rates, make code review hell, and make the project hard to refactor.

As such it should be well commented to avoid regressions by well meaning refactor-zealots.

Most of the time, it's not worth the refactor, even if it does slow down adding future features to that particular area.

If your experience is like mine, you will find that the vast majority of people will not refactor the design at all.

For the people who don't refactor, the reason they usually give is: "There is no time to refactor".

It sort of reintroduces the "hard to 'refactor' your ideas during a 45m coding interview" problem.

For a few weeks (2-4 should be sufficient) tell people, "If you see something wrong with the design, refactor it as soon as you see it.