Are you reorganizing in small steps?

Question

After reading Fowler's "Refactoring" for a while, I still often catch myself thinking: "I had to do it in small steps." - even when I did not break my code.

Refactoring in small steps is safe, but takes time. This is a compromise between speed and risk - I try to be strategic in choosing a refactoring method.

Nevertheless: most often I do refactoring in big steps. If I take part of Fowler’s “Mechanics” section and compare how I work, I may find that I often jump two or five steps forward immediately. This does not mean that I am a refactoring guru. My code may remain broken or incompatible for 5-60 minutes.

Are you reorganizing the smaller steps and trying to create indestructible code at shorter frequencies? And: do you succeed?

Answer 1

Marcus Fowler seems to be leaning toward a small, gradual approach to refactoring. However, after reading his book, he sometimes takes some decisive steps, but only with unit tests for backing up code.

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Answer 10

Yeah. I like to run tests all the time, and so the chain of tiny refactors works well. I feel uncomfortable if my code breaks down for more than a few minutes at a time, and I generally return if my code breaks when I get home at night, rewriting the next morning ALWAYS works better than trying to pick up I was.