The Refactathon: Cleaning up old code

Thanks @oliver, I appreciate your clarification :smiley:

@oliver How do you repay technical debt over time? Do you have regular refactathons? Or was this a one off for some old code?

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Fantastic to see this. And thanks for the follow up explanations @oliver.

It’s a really important thing to do and kudos for blogging about it. A neat way I’ve heard it explained before is that all code is toxic, but that its toxicity increases over time. Like anything that poses risk, it’s always good to check in on toxic waste, and treat to it should it start becoming a significant threat to health…

Engineers are encouraged to refactor code whenever they come across it if they think it’s worth paying down the debt at that time (it’s hard to put exact guidelines around when it’s “worth it”, but smart engineers can figure it out :slight_smile:).

It was @daniel’s idea originally to do this refactathon. It’s the first one we’ve ever done, and lots of engineers quickly got excited about and made it into a huge success. I’d love to make them a regular thing.

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That’s good. I always find that if I refractor as I write, it makes it so much easier than doing it afterwards.

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Nice post guys. @oliver Was wondering if you could go a bit more into the strategy and planning that occurred before you started this refactoring initiative. How did you guys go about deciding which areas to refactor and which to leave alone? How did you come to those decisions.

Again, good post! Thanks!