How often should you refactor?

Question

I had a discussion a few weeks back with some co-workers on refactoring, and I seem to be in a minority that believes \"Refactor early, refactor often\" is a good approach t

Answer 1

If it ain't broke, don't refactor it.

I'd say the time to refactor belongs in the initial coding stage, and ou can do it as often and as many times as you like. Once its in the hands of a customer, then it becomes a different matter. You do not want to make work for yourself 'tidying' up code only to find that it gets shipped and breaks something.

The time after initial delivery to refactor is when you say you'll do it. When the code gets a bit too smelly, then have a dedicated release that contains refactorings and probably a few more important fixes. That way, if you do happen to break something, you know where it went wrong, you can much more easily fix it. If you refactor all the time, you will break things, you will not know that its broken until it gets QAd, and then you'll have a hard time trying to figure out whether the bugfix/feature code changes caused the problem, or some refactoring you performed ages ago.

Checking for cbreaking changes is a lot easier when the code looks roughly like it used to. Refactor a lot of code structure and you can make it next to impossible, so only refactor when you seriously mean to. Treat it like you would any other product code change and you should be ok.