26 April 2017
Based on Martin Fowlers' book "Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code", this month’s engineering workshop focused on how to improve the design of existing code without changing its externally observable behaviour.
The design of software systems that are regularly maintained and evolved can easily deteriorate over time. As software engineers, we strive towards creating clean, robust and functional code, and using refactoring is an important tool for making sure that the quality of our software remains high. The goal of this workshop was, on one hand, to help us realise that there are many small things that can be improved with small investments of time and effort. These small changes can add up to significant improvements over time and make the difference between a system that can be maintained efficiently and a system that is difficult to work on. On the other hand, it might sometimes become necessary to re-evaluate the design of a system as a whole. Refactoring provides the necessary tools for both of these activities and we are now better equipped for tackling our future software engineering challenges.