Comments on: Refactoring vs performance optimization

By: Foo Bar

Foo Bar — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 21:52:04 +0000

…takes a few steps back and just nods. See you in a couple of months again!

By: Foo Bar

Foo Bar — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 21:51:14 +0000

Oh god, ignore my previous post. I completely misread what you said

By: Foo Bar

Foo Bar — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 21:43:25 +0000

Ah (I’m back!).

Well, while I guess you could read it that way; I never did. In fact I had to dig after the book “Refactoring” by Martin Fowler to see if I completely missed that subtle point. And to quote him on what Refactoring is:

“Refactoring (noun): a change made to the internal structure of software to make it easier to understand and cheaper to modify without changing its observable layout.”

To me this sounds more human oriented than machine oriented. But hey, both works, I guess.

Granted, his book is a bit soft-core and only introduced refactoring to the masses so it’s by far not the only definition.

By: Henrik Jernevad

Henrik Jernevad — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 16:56:54 +0000

Hi, dear mr Bar.

Sure it does, but then again, the goal of performance optimization is to increase the “readability” of the code for the computer, not the human.

By: Foo Bar

Foo Bar — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 16:29:40 +0000

Ah, but you forget that optimizing for performance is likely to reduce the readability of the code.

This goes against the idea of refactoring.