Wednesday, July 13, 2005
unrefactor?

Sorry for the silence latley. I'll be back soon..

Walking by a co-workers desk I heard him say un-refactor. Then we started the discussion.. is it...

  • un-refactor
  • defactor
  • de-refactor
  • unfactor

Now one may ask why the whole subject even came up. ;)



7/14/2005 8:50:30 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
Clearly the answer is Undo. :)
7/15/2005 9:38:39 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
I would submit that you don't unrefactor anything and that concept of unrefactoring is antithetical to refactoring as a practice. Clearly the goal of refactoring is to restructure a body of code using small changes or transformations that leave the behavior alone and modify the internal structure only. If you are attempting to refactor and you end up changing the external behavior then I would submit that you have indeed made a mistake and Darrell's suggestion of Undo seems quite appropriate. However, if you simply dislike the transformation you've made I'd submit that you're next step should be to analyze why what you did isn't good and make an appopriate change. Whether your change involves a new transformation or happens to be transforming back to what you previously had they're both examples of just another refactor.

Disagree at will...

McP
7/15/2005 5:18:50 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
what McP said ...


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