History
In the past refactoring was avoided in development processes. One example of this is that CVS (created in 1984) does not version the moving or renaming of files and directories.
Although refactoring code has been done informally for years, William Griswold's 1991 Ph.D. dissertation is one of the first major academic works on refactoring functional and procedural programs, followed by William Opdyke's 1992 dissertation on the refactoring of object-oriented programs, although all the theory and machinery have long been available as program transformation systems. All of these resources provide a catalog of common methods for refactoring; a refactoring method has a description of how to apply the method and indicators for when you should (or should not) apply the method.
Martin Fowler's book Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code is the canonical reference.
The first known use of the term "refactoring" in the published literature was in a September, 1990 article by William F. Opdyke and Ralph E. Johnson. Griswold's Ph.D. thesis, Opdyke's Ph.D. thesis, published in 1992, also used this term.
The term "factoring" has been used in the Forth community since at least the early 1980s. Chapter Six of Leo Brodie's book Thinking Forth (1984) is dedicated to the subject.
In extreme programming, the Extract Method refactoring technique has essentially the same meaning as factoring in Forth; to break down a "word" (or function) into smaller, more easily maintained functions.
Refactorings can also be reconstructed posthoc to produce concise descriptions of complex software changes recorded in software repositories like CVS or SVN.
Read more about this topic: Code Refactoring
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“... that there is no other way,
That the history of creation proceeds according to
Stringent laws, and that things
Do get done in this way, but never the things
We set out to accomplish and wanted so desperately
To see come into being.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“When the coherence of the parts of a stone, or even that composition of parts which renders it extended; when these familiar objects, I say, are so inexplicable, and contain circumstances so repugnant and contradictory; with what assurance can we decide concerning the origin of worlds, or trace their history from eternity to eternity?”
—David Hume (1711–1776)