Martin Fowler

I picked up this book at the wrong time. The book was so successful that a second edition is due out on November 30, 2018 (less than two weeks from now).

On the other hand, I picked up this book at the right time. At work, my project is in the midst of a refactoring project. I am in the middle of changing PHP code from modular functions to object-orientation. The aim of this transition is to enhance the scalability of the project and ease the writing of documentation. I generally like to peer show more "beneath the surface" of skills that I acquire; this book has indeed enlightened my mind to details of what is going on in my code rewrite.

Some of this book is incredibly tedious. It details how to change code from one format to another. It's work that I let my fingers do more of - and my brain less of! But the book also frames how to do this work and why it is so important. It ties together intellectual "loose ends" which might not be tied together by the programmer who simply dives "head first" into the project.

Fowler writes in tandem with a research seminar at the University of Illinois who have pioneered object-oriented techniques in Smalltalk and then Java and C . They tackle the concepts of refactoring more than how to tackle the specifics of coding in a language. I prefer their theoretical approach to more common approaches drenched in technical lingo and programming tools. This book was worth its time. show less

This book literally changed overnight the way I write software. The author says we write code primarily for other humans, not for computers. I have heard it before, but this book made me believe it. It doesn't stop there; the author then walks you through exactly how to write code that is easier to read. Looking back at my own code, if it's hard to follow, it's from before I read this book. If it reads like a novel, it's from after.

This is the book that moved refactoring from the focus of a narrow community to a general concept. Illuminating, well-written, and helpful, it strikes an effective balance between the concrete and the abstract. Any OO developer should have this on a shelf beside Design Patterns, with which it is nearly contemporary.

By the standard of "if you learn one thing from a book, it's worth the price", I was happy with this book. The most valuable thing I learned from the book was how to read and build sequence charts. Some of the design process parts at the beginning are too vague to take action on. Wouldn't want to study UML spec sheets (no common person should want to), so this book was enough to get up and running.