Benefits of Refactoring Code - Loren on the Art of MATLAB

[poster]

Benefits of Refactoring CodeI have seen a lot of code in my life, including code from many different people written for many different purposes, and in many different "styles". These styles range from quick-and-dirty (I only need to do this once), to fully optimized, documented, and tested (I want this to last a long time while other people use it). For me, I have found, a bit more than I expected, that the quick-and-dirty quickly morphs into something being useful and used a lot, but without the thought and care of making sure the code is really up to the task.Today I want to argue why, as soon as you take your quick-and-dirty code, to use again, it is time to refactor and use some good engineering techniques to whip it into shape.Refactoring leads to smaller components First break the code into logical units that are small. Each unit is more concise, it's more focused, does less, and it's clear what it does and does not do. Decide on edge cases and error conditions and deal

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