Announcing the Second Edition of “Refactoring”
martinfowler.com
Announcing the Second Edition of “Refactoring”
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Re: Announcing the Second Edition of “Refactoring”
#2I'm hunting around these days for good books on general programming. I'm a fairly pragmatic programmer (not everything needs to be a class). Has anybody here read the first edition, and what was your impression of it?
Re: Announcing the Second Edition of “Refactoring”
#3Wow, this is huge!
I'm stoked for the book. I'm surprised-but-not-really that it will use JavaScript as its main language to teach the concepts!
> When I wrote the first edition I was frustrated that I was having to write the book's code in a language that was significantly worse than the language I preferred (Smalltalk). Little did I know that I would take another step downwards twenty years later.
Oh, the irony!
Re: Announcing the Second Edition of “Refactoring”
#4I'm hunting around these days for good books on general programming. I'm a fairly pragmatic programmer (not everything needs to be a class). Has anybody here read the first edition, and what was your impression of it?
I really enjoyed the first edition, though I will admit I didn't read the true original, I read the Ruby version that was adapted for (and approved by) Martin himself. Given I do Ruby/Python programming, it was a better book for me than the original, but since I also do plenty of JavaScript programming, I imagine I will at least skim the 2nd edition as well.
Re: Announcing the Second Edition of “Refactoring”
#5I'm hunting around these days for good books on general programming. I'm a fairly pragmatic programmer (not everything needs to be a class). Has anybody here read the first edition, and what was your impression of it?
I found it to be somewhat basic. The primary language is Java so a lot of the techniques are rooted in the kind of "move the dirt around" refactoring that you get with that language, and indeed covers what became the "refactoring" options in Java IDE's. Its a good overview of the ideas of refactoring, but often ends up creating more code and structure, since its often hard to change things in Java without adding more code.
Javascript has a lot more first-class options other than classes and interfaces, so there might be some more insight.
As far as good programming books, I quite liked Code Complete when I was a younger programmer, and found that Anti-Patterns was helpful in giving me a lot of vocabulary and patterns in recognizing what happens in job-settings, as well as refactoring overviews as a solution to real problems.
Re: Announcing the Second Edition of “Refactoring”
#6The book will be released in a series of ten thousand editions, each one modified slightly from the previous one but still correct and self-consistent.
Re: Announcing the Second Edition of “Refactoring”
#7I'm hunting around these days for good books on general programming. I'm a fairly pragmatic programmer (not everything needs to be a class). Has anybody here read the first edition, and what was your impression of it?
I read it 15 years ago. No other book has influenced my programming as much as this one. The main value I got from it is that it teaches you what "clean" code looks like. Highly recommended.
Re: Announcing the Second Edition of “Refactoring”
#8I'm hunting around these days for good books on general programming. I'm a fairly pragmatic programmer (not everything needs to be a class). Has anybody here read the first edition, and what was your impression of it?
One of my biggest lessons from the book is right in the introduction. To paraphrase: "If a change you want to make to the codebase is hard, refactor the codebase until that change is easy, then make the change".
I always try to either be refactoring or changing behavior but not both at the same time. That has kept me out of a lot of trouble.
Re: Announcing the Second Edition of “Refactoring”
#9I'm hunting around these days for good books on general programming. I'm a fairly pragmatic programmer (not everything needs to be a class). Has anybody here read the first edition, and what was your impression of it?
Has anybody here read the first edition, and what was your impression of it?
It's a decent book, though obviously looking a bit dated now, particularly in the OO-centric presentation. I would confidently recommend it to someone like a junior developer at work or a keen self-taught programmer who had figured out the basic mechanics and was starting to explore ideas about building and maintaining bigger systems. I probably wouldn't recommend it to anyone further down the path, though, just because the techniques described tend to be quite simple and they're mostly things that people learn with experience anyway.
Re: Announcing the Second Edition of “Refactoring”
#10I'm hunting around these days for good books on general programming. I'm a fairly pragmatic programmer (not everything needs to be a class). Has anybody here read the first edition, and what was your impression of it?
Keep in mind that the original was written back in 2000. So most of the ideas in the book are pretty much mainstream these days. The second edition should be pretty interesting because of the move away from being class-centric.
When I was in college, I read "Refactoring to Patterns" which pretty much sums up Refactoring in a short chapter. The ideas aren't really that complicated, but seeing some practical examples is pretty useful.