Re: Slow refactoring...

On May 8, 2017, at 7:50 PM, John Yeung <gallium.arsenide@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Mon, May 8, 2017 at 7:12 PM, Buck Calabro <kc2hiz@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 8 May 2017 at 16:36, Jack Tucky <jacktucky@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I try to use RDI more and more everyday. I've never heard of refactoring.
I searched help and quick access. How can I find out what it does?

Well, Rob pointed you to Google, and that wasn't wrong, but I would
have suggested fewer search terms. Before finding out what refactoring
is in the context of RDi or RPG, I would have recommended finding out
what refactoring is in general.

Buck did a nice job of explaining, both generally and in the context
of RDi. I just wanted to mention that it's even broader than changing
variable names or lifting out constants or anything that specific.
Buck said this:

Now that the dry stuff is over, what is refactoring? Refactoring is
the process, the art and science of changing a block of code without
altering the functionality of that block.

That's actually about as specific as you can be and still encompass
all that refactoring is. It can involve deeper changes, like getting
rid of loops and adding recursion, or vice-versa. That's on the exotic
side, but definitely pulling out repetitive code into a subprocedure
would be a common one. Pretty much anything goes, as long as the
functionality doesn't change.

Some links on the broad topic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_refactoring

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1025844/what-is-refactoring-and-what-is-only-modifying-code

Naturally, any IDE will only be able to help with the more limited and
specific forms of refactoring. (At least with today's technology.) But
that's already very useful.

John Y.
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