In this Hasty Treat, Scott and Wes discuss refactoring, what it is, why you should do it, when to do it, as well as best practices and much more.

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Show Notes

5:00 - What is refactoring and why would you do it?

• Re-writing code while maintaining functionality
• The first code you write is most likely not your best code

7:32 - Benefits To Refactoring

• Keep part of your codebase in your head
• Keep codebase timely and up to date (E.g. promises, async, await, etc.)
• Writing code from the vantage point of having already built your product
• Performance improvement

12:54 - When to refactor

• When it’s stopping your from progressing
• When brining someone new on to your team
• When you can see a more elegant solution
• When you’re having performance issues
• When you’re sharing or presenting code
• When you have a large codebase that needs to be broken up into smaller components

19:03 - Tips on how to refactor

• Testing will make refactoring easier
• Identify bad code and problem areas
• Use git as an escape hatch
• Break things into smaller chunks
• Publish often use code to npm as modules

Links

• Facebook’s Codemod
• Syntax043 - 20 JavaScript Array and Object Methods to make you a better developer

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