Advices on refactoring

Brevity is the soul of wit, but clarity is the soul of evolvable software.

Martin Fowler, "Refactoring: A First Example", in Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code (2nd Edition), 33.

I always have to strike a balance between all the refactorings I could do and adding new features. At the moment, most people underprioritize refactoring — but there still is a balance. My rule is a variation on the camping rule: Always leave the code base healthier than when you found it. It will never be perfect, but it should be better.

Martin Fowler, "Refactoring: A First Example", in Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code (2nd Edition), 34.

I'm talking about improving the code — but programmers love to argue about what good code looks like. [...] If we consider this to be a matter of aesthetics, where nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so, we lack any guide but personal taste. I believe, however, that we can go beyond taste and say that the true test of good code is how easy it is to change it.

Martin Fowler, "Refactoring: A First Example", in Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code (2nd Edition), 43.

The key to effective refactoring is recognizing that you go faster when you take tiny steps, the code is never broken, and you can compose those small steps into substantial changes.Remeber that — and the rest is silence.

Martin Fowler, "Refactoring: A First Example", in Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code (2nd Edition), 44.