The last 2 weeks have been one of the most fun times working for Docscorp. The team were given the chance to redesign our comparison model to be a better one. At the current state, the model is one big giant blob of procedural functions which are contained in …. 2 CLASSES. Yep that’s right 2 classes. (Now you know how bad it is). Our job was basically to transform these 2 classes into a model that is much more object oriented.

I spent some times to skim through all the functions of the 2 classes. I realized that all the logics are already solid, its just that the code are not as “organized” as it should be. Or in other words, redesigning the current model means One BIG refactoring job needs to be applied to the 2 classes.

I decided to take a stab on it and started refactoring the classes. After a few days, I came up with a good clean model of how it should be done. While refactoring, I realized that all I’m doing is just applying a couple of programming principles to those 2 classes. These principles are:

• Single Responsibility Principle (SRP).
• Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY).
• Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS).

Yep, those are the only principles that helped me transform/refactor 2 giant procedural classes to be a modular object oriented model.

I think those should be the basis of your decision of when to refactor your code. If you find that you’re repeating yourself or writing the same/similar logic, then it warrants to refactor your code. If you find that your logic/algorithm gets too complicated, it’s time to break it down to make it simpler (doesn’t mean that you have to change your logic). Lastly if you find your code is doing to much or having to much responsibility, it’s time to refactor it out (I know by definition SRP is a class thing, but I think the same logic can be applied to functions).

You can always take things further and apply more programming principles to your code. But these three principles is a must in order to achieve a reasonable clean code. If you apply these three rules in your day to day code, I’m sure overtime you’ll find that your code will be a lot cleaner and much more maintainable. Thus, don’t be afraid to apply these rules to refactor your code.

RWendi