Just like you said: refactor early, refactor often. Refactoring early means the necessary changes are still fresh on my mind. Refactoring often means the changes tend to be smaller. Delaying refactoring only ends up making a big mess which further makes it harder to refactor. Cleaning up as soon as I notice the mess prevents … Read more
Martin Fowler’s “Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code” is perhaps THE reference: Refactoring is a controlled technique for improving the design of an existing code base. Its essence is applying a series of small behavior-preserving transformations, each of which “too small to be worth doing”. However the cumulative effect of each of these transformations … Read more
I’m going to assume you mean C#. Some of these things apply to other languages, too. You have several options: switch from constructor to property setters. This can make code more readable, because it’s obvious to the reader which value corresponds to which parameters. Object Initializer syntax makes this look nice. It’s also simple to … Read more
I don’t know of a site that catalogs them directly, but one strategy that I’ve used on occasion is this: Find an old, small, unmaintained open source project on sourceforge Download it, get it to compile/build/run Read the documentation, get a feel for the code Use the techniques in Working Effectively with Legacy Code to … Read more
Here are some reasons why unused code should be removed: For anyone new working on a project, they not only have to understand the working code, they have to understand unused material also. This is wasted time and creates confusion. There is a danger that at some time, someone will make a change which inadvertently … Read more