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In personal project’s refactors are dangerous. Not because of bugs, but because they tax your motivation more heavily than other tasks. Personal projects don’t

• madeofpalk 4y ago
  Depends what the refactor is. I think personal/side projects are a great place to give into the attractive nuisances we encounter in programming.
• jakelazaroff 4y ago
  I guess it depends on what motivates you! I find refactors a zen-like experience. Figuring out the way to make everything fit together elegantly is a really satisfying task for me. Also, "personal projects don't fail until you decide they do" is a great insight :)
• IlliOnato 4y ago
  I actually love refactoring. I really like to keep my code "elegant" and so I tend to constantly refactor it (which also makes a typical refactoring step small, and thus not a chore). At work it's sometimes a hindrance: I tend to overdo the clean-up stuff; for me it's hard to resist a temptation to have even simple throw-away code clean and maintainable, and it is difficult for me to cut corners when working on something urgent. Of course sometimes throw-away code is not thrown away and is maintained for years and years, and cutting corners accumulates code debt (which you later on pay with interest), but overall I tend to be slow with small projects, although reasonably fast (if you include debugging time) with large ones. But when working on a personal project, and can tidy the code up to my heart content! It actually helps to keep up my enthusiasm, not the other way around. I guess different people have different preferences and predilections :-)