Many developers use the term “refactoring” to refer to any “clean up” effort in the code. This definition, unfortunately, mischaracterizes refactoring’s power to allow us, as software programmers, to incrementally make powerful changes to the structure of our code without changing the behavior. The problem is that sometimes developers will make changes to code in order to “make it better” when there isn’t a clear reason to change the code in the name of “tech debt” and this introduces unnecessary risk that rightfully bothers non-developers.

On the other hand, if there is a business reason to make a change to code, refactoring is a great way to transform the code so that the change is easy to make. Mike will do live coding to demonstrate specific techniques that will allow you to stay green throughout a larger refactor to make the change easy (so you can then make the easy change!)