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Refactoring your code is essential in large topics. We talk about what refactoring is and things to look for when refactoring

News/Follow-ups – 00:36

• Bitbucket upgrades space
• HotGloo leaves beta, releases plans
• Balsamiq is also great for wire framing – from Craig

Geek Tool – 06:40

• Pocket Ref – Your pocket reference for everything
• O’Reilly Pocket Reference Series

Webapps – 09:09

• DummyImage – Dummy images to fill spaces
• Visual representation of popular sorting algorithms

Topic – 15:56

• Refactoring Code
  • What?
    • Change source code without changing the external functions/behavior
  • Why?
    • Improved readability
    • Reduced complexity
    • Improved maintainability
    • Improve extensibility
  • Things you can do
    • Break large routines into smaller sub routines
    • Look for duplicated code and reduce it to used a shared function
    • Code smells (episode 21)
    • Find old commented out code and remove it, use SCM for storing old code you might want
    • Find methods with 7+ parameters – Usually means that a new class should be created
    • Replace variables with names like x and foo – Sometimes as developers we are too busy in our train of thought to think of descriptive variable names and make something up just for the time being.  Find these and change them to more descriptive ones.
    • Look for comments that tell the what and not the why
    • A severe code stench emanates when the scroll bar appears – Reduce complex  nested ifs and loops
    • Look for methods for gtgtwhich you cannot understand/explain in less than 25 seconds
  • A group of unit tests are needed before refactoring
  • Getting Started with Refactoring