Fat Agnus

You may or may not have heard the term Refactoring before, but it is a term that sometimes seems to be used loosely in software development, when someone wants to do something to the code. For good measure I have added the definition below.

“Refactoring: a change made to the internal structure of software to make it easier to understand and cheaper to modify without changing its observable behavior.”
Martin Fowler, Refactoring

The book contains around 90 tips, with step-by-step description, on how you can refactor your code to become more robust and understandable.

The first few chapters start out with the basic techniques of refactoring and might be a bit tedious to read, not only because of the step-by-step guide but also if you already have some experience with refactoring code.

Even though I have been practicing refactoring for a couple of years, I still learned a few good techniques that I can put into my toolbox.

Besides all the techniques that are presented, Fowler has also written a couple of chapters on why you need to do refactoring. So, I would say that this is a must read for every programmer who wants to be serious about software development, it is a book that I will recommend for everyone.

Btw. If you are using Visual Studio like me, then you should get Resharper, which is a great tool that will help you do a lot of the techniques.