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by theshrike79 745 days ago
"Always leave the code you're editing a little better than you found it" - Robert C. Martin (Uncle Bob)

There's no point in refactoring the whole thing. Maybe add a longer comment explaining the logic you had to decipher when you encountered the code. Rename a few variables from foo, bar and baz tom something more descriptive etc.
1 comments
MaxBarraclough 745 days ago
> There's no point in refactoring the whole thing

Deep architectural/design flaws in a codebase can't always be addressed using a series of small independent changes.

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theshrike79 745 days ago
Yes, but that's also not a thing you do on the side with extra hours you have left over here and there.

It's basically refactoring/rewriting the whole part of the system in most cases, which is a full project in itself.

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gfairbanks 745 days ago
Agreed. The architecture mismatch paper [1] identifies common assumptions that software can make, such as "I own the main thread of control and other modules will do my bidding", that tend to be baked-in from the start.

[1] Garlan, Allen, and Ockerbloom. Architectural Mismatch: Why Reuse Is So Hard. IEEE Software 1994. https://ics.uci.edu/~andre/ics223w2006/garlanallenockerbloom...

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naasking 745 days ago
> Deep architectural/design flaws in a codebase can't always be addressed using a series of small independent changes.

Not sure that's true. At the extreme end, you introduce a replacement with a better architecture and run it side by side with the old one, incrementally switching over dependents. Of course, that may take more overall work, but maybe the incrementality is sometimes worth it.

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