Oh give it a rest, that’s not what I said. Why have you put ‘terrible code’ in quote marks as if you’re quoting me, when that phrase appears nowhere in the article? In fact, the whole point of the post is that there are benefits to refactoring beyond simply trying to improve code. You understood that, though. Right?

The phrase “everyone knows that” was intended to be slightly tongue-in-cheek, which I had hoped would be picked up by being unnecessarily sweeping and all-encompassing. Generally speaking I think it’s a good thing, but I also think Steve Yegge hit the nail on the head when he said that refactoring had become the goal rather than the cure.

I read your Refunctoring article and largely agree with it; I code C# for a living and often find myself edging towards a functional style for certain problems. However, I think you’re a bit strident; not all refactoring is simply a progression towards using map, foldr, and filter; similarly, I think you’re overly harsh on Java and C#. C# at least is moving in interesting directions - LINQ is providing something very similar to (if more verbose than) Haskell’s list comprehensions, and also now supports lambdas and a form of type inference. Whilst it’s never going to be as much fun writing C# as it is to write Haskell or Ruby (which are my preferred languages outside the office, along with Ocaml), it’s encouraging that such a mainstream language is starting to “get it”.

I hold my hand up and concede that my phrasing didn’t really communicate any of this. Sorry. I’m just getting used to blogging and realise I need to be careful about how people interpret my writing.

This is called an argumentum ad populum logical fallacy. Logical fallacies are very prolific in hyperbolic material such that which purports refactoring as anything but a perversion of science.

There exists one person who doesn’t “know that Refactoring is good” and actively refutes the truth value of this statement (it is so false that the inverse is true). I wrote an article titled Refunctoring quite some time ago; I’ll happily support my position with evidence and reason upon request.

I bring this to your attention so as not to continue the proliferation of mythology and mislead potentially innocent bystanders into a similar state of delusion.