Code refactoring is a common terminology in the software engineering field.
What is code refactoring?
Code refactoring is the process of enhancing and improving the code structure without changing its behavior.
Why is code refactoring needed?
Code refactoring is facilitating the code to be more understandable and making it extendable and maintainable. It is a gradual and continuous process. So, if there is a new feature that should be added or a change should be done in the code, it will be easier and more comfortable to extend, amend the existing code moreover it will save time, effort, and for sure money.
How can a code be refactored?
One of the refactoring techniques is following the pyramid of refactoring. The pyramid lower levels support the higher levels.
The first block of the pyramid is "Flow" which means putting the statements and variables are related to each other in a small concept together.
The next block in the pyramid is "Methods". It means extracting those variables and statements to be inserted into smaller methods.
After that a "Classes" block, in this step those small methods can be collected in a class, and after adding the related methods in the related classes, patterns can be used.
In the "Patterns" step using design patterns that fulfill the need can be chosen for creating classes plus applying the object orient programming concepts to provide the best and optimized interaction between classes.
At the top of the pyramid, there is the "Architecture" as we have obtained classes that follow patterns in addition there are packages, modules, and domains, and the architecture is stable now.
A refactoring pyramid is a twin to test pyramid. The test pyramid covers the whole software testing levels like unit tests, component tests, integration tests, system tests, and UI tests.
While the test levels exist while code refactoring, tests guarantee unchanged code behavior and no code functionality broken.
After discussing code refactoring, now we can say that Code refactoring is very essential and crucial so do not hesitate to invest time in refactoring the written code to touch its value in the short and long run.
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Here are some scenarios where code refactoring might not be necessary:
1. Simple, well-written code: If your code is already well-organized, easy to read, and performs efficiently, there might not be much benefit to refactoring.
2. Code with limited future use: If the code is only used for a short-term project or is unlikely to be modified further, refactoring might not be worthwhile. The time and effort invested might outweigh the potential benefits.
3. Refactoring brings no clear benefit: In some cases, refactoring might not result in significant improvements in terms of readability, maintainability, or performance. It's crucial to carefully evaluate the potential benefits before embarking on a refactoring effort.