Refactoring Quotes

Building technical systems involves a lot of hard work and specialized knowledge: languages and protocols, coding and debugging, testing and refactoring. (Jesse James Garrett)
Refactoring is a disciplined technique for restructuring an existing body of code, altering its internal structure without changing its external behavior. Its heart is a series of small behavior preserving transformations. Each transformation (called a 'refactoring') does little, but a sequence of transformations can produce a significant restructuring. Since each refactoring is small, it's less likely to go wrong. The system is also kept fully working after each small refactoring, reducing the chances that a system can get seriously broken during the restructuring. View quote
Martin Fowler
Refactoring (noun) : a change made to the internal structure of software to make it easier to understand and cheaper to modify without changing the observable behavior of the software. To refactor (verb) : to restructure software by applying a series of refactorings without changing the observable behavior of the software. View quote
Martin Fowler
One's words are a gift to the community. For the wiki nature to take whole, you have to let go of your words. You have to be okay with that. This goes into the name, called refactoring. To collaborate on a work, one must trust. The reason the cooperation happens is we are people and it is deep in our nature to do things together. View quote
Ward Cunningham
Refactoring (noun) : a change made to the internal structure of software to make it easier to understand and cheaper to modify without changing the observable behavior of the software. To refactor (verb) : to restructure software by applying a series of refactorings without changing the observable behavior of the software. View quote
Kent Beck
This is why we are on record claiming that the missional conversation - refactoring mission back into the equation of church - contains the seeds of authenticity and renewal for Christianity in our time and place. View quote
Alan Hirsch
Putting a new feature into a program is important, but refactoring so new features can be added in the future is equally important. View quote
Ward Cunningham
Everything is subject to refactoring. View quote
Ward Cunningham
Anonymity relieves refactoring friction. Have learned that people want to sign things. But try to write in a way where you don't have to know who said it. View quote
Ward Cunningham
Often as you move comments around and have similar comments adjacent to each other, you find that half of the words can be cut out. Because a sentence says it all if the sentence is in just the right place. On Ward's wiki, the process has been called "refactoring," which is what we call the process in software. Ward's wiki is about software and it has software people on it, so they call it refactoring. Anyplace else it would probably be called editing. So on Ward's wiki, refactoring is an ongoing process. The assumption is that when something turns out to not be ideal, it will be refactored again. Everything is subject to refactoring. View quote
Ward Cunningham
Putting a new feature into a program is important, but refactoring so new features can be added in the future is equally important. The ability to do things in the future is something that I consider suppleness, like clay your hands that accepts your expression. Programs and documents get brittle very quickly. Wiki imagines a more dynamic environment where we accept change... (Ward Cunningham)