Refactoring: Deep Dive and Current Trends

Abstract

Refactoring is an important activity in software engineering. Whether it takes place during the initial design of a system, or during maintenance, it is a powerful tool that can be used in order to keep code working and maintainable. Refactoring is used to eliminate Code Smells, in other words poorly designed code, while maintaining the functionality of the code. Keeping code understandable and well designed is critical to the success of any software project. In this paper, we present a literature review of recent advances and trends in refactoring and examine the practice of refactoring by looking at its key tenets.