To Rewrite or Not to Rewrite?

To Rewrite Or Not To Rewrite

Kevin Roper Articles, Development Technologies & Tools, Opinion, Programming Leave a Comment

A recent project got me thinking about the old trope that, upon getting involved in an existing project, the first thing any developer wants to do is rewrite it.

Obviously, that’s not always true, and in fact, I’ve rarely been tempted. But the following situation made the thought cross my mind, and it also led me to realize the reasons I didn’t bite.

Let’s talk about it, but first, I’ll talk more generally about rewriting codes, the potential benefits, and the reasons it’s typically best not to.

Refactoring Strategies For Ugly Code The Does Everything

Refactoring: Ugly Code That Does Everything

Gabe Schmidt Articles, Development Technologies & Tools, JavaScript, Node.js, Programming, Tutorial Leave a Comment

If you’ve been writing code for a significant amount of time, you’re sure to have seen the—anything but godly—“God Method.” It’s a method that performs way too many processes in the system and has grown beyond all realistic logic to become “The Method That Does Everything.”

This single unsightly method can span dozens, if not hundreds, of lines. Sometimes even over 1,000! This type of “ugly code” is an unbearable beast to maintain. This is why it’s considered a “code smell” or anti-pattern.

In this tutorial, we walk through a tangible “God Method” and step through the process to refactor it into something more manageable and human-readable. Our code is written in JavaScript for a Node.js service, but the principles apply to any language.

Code For Maintainability So The Next Developer Doesn’t Hate You

Rik Scarborough Articles, Programming 7 Comments

Attention: The following article was published over 11 years ago, and the information provided may be aged or outdated. Please keep that in mind as you read the post.Unless your problem domain includes some specific need for highly optimized code, consider what is your biggest coding priority. I’m going to suggest that you make it maintainability. There was an online meme …