{"id":20511,"date":"2020-06-11T12:37:00","date_gmt":"2020-06-11T12:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/toggl.com\/blog\/?p=20511"},"modified":"2024-08-08T04:12:42","modified_gmt":"2024-08-08T04:12:42","slug":"hidden-dangers-refactoring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/toggl.com\/blog\/hidden-dangers-refactoring","title":{"rendered":"The Hidden Dangers of Refactoring [Comic]"},"content":{"rendered":"
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<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

A couple of years ago I had what looked like a leaky sewage pipe in my apartment. We started taking out the wall to get to the root of the problem. It wasn\u2019t long before half of the apartment was stripped to the bones. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

During one of our long and sweary smoke breaks, my builder\u2014normally a chatty fellow\u2014grew awfully quiet, took a long drag of the cigarette and said: \u201cIt\u2019s easier to tear everything down and build a house from scratch\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is exactly<\/em> how software works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Joel Spolsky put it, programmers, in their hearts, are architects.<\/a> They want to build things\u2014not tinker, fine-tune and refactor. It\u2019s much more fun designing a house from the ground up instead of trying to figure out where the previous owner hid all the wiring and please dear god tell me it\u2019s not buried behind the extremely flammable insulation (it is).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But you can\u2019t always tear everything down and start again. The old code might be ugly and bloated, but that\u2019s probably because it\u2019s holding back horrible, ancient bugs that you and your users have long forgotten about. \u201cIt\u2019s ugly\u201d is never a good reason for a rewrite. Over time your program might slow down, but this can be alleviated by slowly and systematically swapping out the really messy bits, even if it requires the worst thing imaginable\u2014reading and understanding someone\u2019s old code.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It may be tedious. But if done carefully and with proper testing, refactoring will be a lot faster than a total rewrite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About the comics<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

When not refactoring Toggl, we like to blow off steam by teaching programming concepts with comics. You should take these teachings with a grain of salt, but we like to think they\u2019re more accurate than not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recently we explained the differences between waterfall, agile and other development methods with space rockets.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is Toggl?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Toggl<\/a> is a simple time tracking app that helps you see where you\u2019re spending your working hours. Time can slip away if you\u2019re not paying attention, so it\u2019s handy to have a tool that tells you how long you\u2019ve spent on your work projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019ve also developed a couple of other tools to make organizing work easier\u2014Toggl Plan<\/a> is a neat team calendar and planner and Toggl Hire<\/a> is our test-based hiring tool.
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A couple of years ago I had what looked like a leaky sewage pipe in my apartment. We started taking out the wall to get…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":20522,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[857],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-creative"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Hidden Dangers of Refactoring [Comic]<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Refactoring is critical to keeping programs running, but all too often it makes you want to burn it all down. 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