How do you refactor?

Question

I was wondering how other developers begin refactoring. What is your first step? How this process (refactoring) differ if you refactor code which is not yours? Do you write

Answer 1

I agree with the other posters when you're refactoring code you wrote.

If it's code you didn't write, and especially if there's lots of it, I would start by using tools like fxCop, Visual Studio's Code Analysis, DevPartner -- I'm sure there are other good ones. They would give you ideas about where to start and what the most common coding issues are. I would also do stress testing to see where the bottlenecks are, therefore the greatest return on your effort at improving the code.

I love to refactor my code, but it is possible to overdo it. If you aren't really improving the app's performance, or seriously improving code readability, you should probably stop. There is always the possibility of introducing new bugs when you refactor, especially if you're working without unit tests.