Barriers to Refactoring

doi:10.1145/3131873

Barriers to Refactoring

2017-09-25

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DOI：10.1145/3131873

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REFACTORING(6) IS SOMETHING software developers like to do. They refactor a lot. But do they refactor as much as they would like? Are there barriers that prevent them from doing so? Refactoring is an important tool for improving quality. Many development methodologies rely on refactoring, especially for agile methodologies but also in more plan-driven organizations. If barriers exist, they would undermine the effectiveness of many product-development organizations. We conducted a large-scale survey in 2009 of 3,785 practitioners' use of object-oriented concepts, 7 including questions as to whether they would refactor to deal with certain design problems. We expected either that practitioners would tell us our choice of design principles was inappropriate for basing a refactoring decision or that refactoring is the right decision to take when designs were believed to have quality problems. However, we were told the decision of whether or not to refactor was due to non-design considerations. It is now eight years since the survey, but little has changed in integrated development environment (IDE) support for refactoring, and what has changed has done little to address the barriers we identified.

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Barriers to Refactoring

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