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The point is, the code wasn't broken. It just wasn't done the "right" way. I've had to fire people because they could not stop "refactoring" code that wasn't

The point is, the code wasn't broken. It just wasn't done the "right" way. I've had to fire people because they could not stop "refactoring" code that wasn't broken. Their commits were half in the code the were supposed to be working on and half scattered, random changes like the changes from the article. You're not "sharing experience"; you're wasting time, money and energy. You are insulting your co-workers intelligence. You are pissing off your boss. Worse, your co-workers now have to merge your random edits into their work because they were actually assigned to work on the section of code you "fixed". There is nothing worse than doing a pull and finding a bunch of small, conflicting and ultimately useless changes on the head, ruining your morning coffee.

unwind 13y ago
Heh. Your comment actually made me blush. :) I certainly hope I do whatever I do with a bit more finesse than what you imply. So far co-workers do not seem to be offended, and no boss has ever seemed pissed off to me. From your remark, it sounds as if you consider "refactoring" to be almost a swear word, and something that should never happen. I just can't agree with that, even with code I've written myself I sometimes realize I did it wrong. I practice commenting on other people's code a lot online, that seems to work pretty well, too. Of course it's even harder to notice if I'm offending people online.
- Ensorceled 13y ago
  > From your remark, it sounds as if you consider "refactoring" to be almost a swear word, and something that should never happen. I just can't agree with that, even with code I've written myself I sometimes realize I did it wrong. Ha! Not really, in my career I think I am still "net negative" for lines of code; I once refactored a 100K line medical diagnostic program down to ~10K lines for instance. What is a swear word is people who use "refactoring" as an excuse to start dicking around with stuff that doesn't need to be fixed. Refactoring certainly has it's place, but needs to have a purpose: new feature set that requires the rework, performance, what have you. Too many developers just pick something that is working and "refactor" it ... then you end up with the same thing you started with, just "better" and with different bugs.

unwind 13y ago

Heh. Your comment actually made me blush. :) I certainly hope I do whatever I do with a bit more finesse than what you imply. So far co-workers do not seem to be offended, and no boss has ever seemed pissed off to me. From your remark, it sounds as if you consider "refactoring" to be almost a swear word, and something that should never happen. I just can't agree with that, even with code I've written myself I sometimes realize I did it wrong. I practice commenting on other people's code a lot online, that seems to work pretty well, too. Of course it's even harder to notice if I'm offending people online.

Ensorceled 13y ago
> From your remark, it sounds as if you consider "refactoring" to be almost a swear word, and something that should never happen. I just can't agree with that, even with code I've written myself I sometimes realize I did it wrong. Ha! Not really, in my career I think I am still "net negative" for lines of code; I once refactored a 100K line medical diagnostic program down to ~10K lines for instance. What is a swear word is people who use "refactoring" as an excuse to start dicking around with stuff that doesn't need to be fixed. Refactoring certainly has it's place, but needs to have a purpose: new feature set that requires the rework, performance, what have you. Too many developers just pick something that is working and "refactor" it ... then you end up with the same thing you started with, just "better" and with different bugs.