Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code

Well, it took me 10 years to read this book. Seriously. Fowler wrote a second edition during that time, making the book way more relatable for a modern programmer.

I took many courses and matured as a programmer a lot during this time, yet I had so much trouble with this one. The reason is pretty simple: Polish translation of the original book is famously atrocious…

But hey, I’m getting way ahead of myself. Let’s start from the beginning!

At some point of your career you get annoyed by the code you produce. You might figure out what’s wrong by yourself, but when you’re neck deep in it, it’s hard to get the perspective. You can feel the smell, but you’re not always sure where it’s coming from. And Fowler’s book is going to give you that perspective.

I started reading Refactoring in 2025, while it was initially released in 1999. Sounds like madness? Well, some of the parts of the book definiitely feel dated, but the general principles are still valid. That’s because you don’t need to reinvent the wheel (which is exactly why I hate “modern” web frontend tech). The book teaches you that the code needs to be readable – it’s written for humans, not for machines. It also gives you a big chunk of solutions to frequent problems that we all have to conquer.

I’m really happy I finally found the time to grab it from the top of my Pile of Shame. It was a nice refresher and a good exercise. I just wish I had more opportunities to focus on code… It’s funny I recently did some contract work on a hellish landscape that was WordPress with hardcoded WooCommerce stuff. HTML entangled within business logic inside a theme. Like in “good” old times. It would be such an excellent case for implementing the solutions from the book!