[travisgriggs]

It’s funny how the term “refactor” has evolved to include “rewrite/rearchitect.”

As originally championed and coined by Ralph Johnson and his protégés at UIUC, it was strictly a (semi provable) safe transformation to the code structure/syntax (usually motivated by trying to make the code easier to understand and/or maintain). Since it was a new word in those days, we still used the terms rewrite and rearchitect as the primary lexicon of “change the code” and “refactor” stated to its niche.

Of course pure refactorings sometimes aren’t as pure as we hope. And they’re often coincident with rewrites and rearchitectures, because we often transform the code first to make a change in behavior easier to implement.

I’m not complaining about the use here. A drop in replacement of an http library would indeed be a true refactoring if indeed none of the externally viewed behavior changed, but as the OP has undoubtedly learned through their own experience, most refactorings end up being something like refarcotring++.

I’m mostly just marveling how in 30 short years, I got to witness the transformation of this term in coumputing lingo.