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To put in very common language here: there are times when refactoring would be way more costly and difficult than rewriting.
by majormajor 6y ago
To put in very common language here: there are times when refactoring would be way more costly and difficult than rewriting.
- maest 6y agoI suspect people here can comprehend the idea without requiring a tortured programming-related metaphore.
- djsavvy 6y agoYet at the same time couching ideas in familiar language helps contextualize and retain them.
- hakfoo 6y agoI've actually heard the some other devs say they interpret the current calls to action as "refactor the police". Saying "defund" and "disband" has somewhat derailed the discussion with people asking "does that mean when we call 911 it goes to voicemail?" "Reform" is already a loaded word, as it's been associated with plenty of do-nothing or make-the-situation-worse initiatives. Refactor is a great choice, except for limited currency outside the programming sector. It implies wholesale changes, an attempt to improve quality, but also that the existing desired functionality is still being honoured. Indeed, it does bring up the appropriatre set of folloup questions-- can this be refactored with reasonable cost constraints and chances of success?
- charlieflowers 6y agoThis is one of those rare cases where the right thing is to throw out the current system and “re-write” it from scratch.
- noelherrick 6y agoYep! A codebase has so much “culture” in it-it reflects the values and the experience of those who wrote it
- luckylion 6y agoYou need to make an accurate comparison though. It's like shutting down your servers, rewriting from scratch, and hoping that your customers will still be there for you when you've reached feature parity.