thedailychannel.com — recommended books

Refactoring
by Martin Fowler

It's silly to think about simply reading this book. To get the most benefit, you really have to study it, and of course do some refactorings. To refactor code is to engage it in a conversation, as you might talk with a person who is initially a stranger.

A small group of us get together and talk about refactoring on three out of every four or five Tuesdays. One of the participants is a web publisher, and set up a study group web page at refactoring.arsdigita.com

Sad to say, arsdigita.com disappeared, but the study group web page has been reincarnated here at thedailychannel.com/java.

I'm sure I'll return to this book review in another several months, but for the time being I can say that even though the examples are in the java programming language, I have been able to put the ideas and principles into play immediately in the code base I'm using now, and that it has already paid off, big time, in better designed, more reliable code, with more features in it sooner. Whew. Well, are you gonna buy the book, or not? Okay, okay, it helps a lot if you know java.

Cogitate your way over to amazon.com and improve the design of your existing code with Refactoring by Martin Fowler

reviewed September 6 2001