Refactoring is, in the words of Martin Fowler — often credited as the person who formalized the concept — "the process of changing a software system in such a way that it does not alter the external behavior of the code yet improves its internal structure." In plainer terms: refactoring means cleaning up how code is written and organized internally, without changing what that code actually does from a user's or system's perspective. The idea of "cleaning up code" existed long before Fowler gave it a name, but his 1999 book, Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code , consolidated scattered best practices from across the industry into a specific, named catalog of techniques — with clear methods for applying each one while minimizing the risk of introducing new bugs along the way. That catalog, and the discipline it introduced, is still the reference point most developers mean when they use the term today. How Refactoring Actually Works The general...
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