Intro And Epilogue 🐬

How about the shortest essay ever to appear around here?

Yep, you got it this time.

And this one can’t be outdone for brevity. Oh yeah, it’s not going to join the leagues of some other essays such as  the following anytime soon—these have actually been given the moniker each of a novella. These essays come to mind, of course, for their glaring lack of brevity:

• Best Algorithms Books (Part 1)
• On Writing: Or How I Write
• Software Actors, Rare Benefactors

Yep, this essay’s going to be short (and possibly even sweet.) Get Shorty.

Or something.

So Where’s The Good Stuff? 🎬

Hold up. Lest we get carried away and forget all about the theme of this essay—the very best in the fine art of refactoring—I’m so very excited to have lately discovered the fabulously updated (second) edition of the venerable book Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code by Martin Fowler. You may remember that it had made a (well-deserved) splash in the digital ocean that is our industry, and the one in which we swim like minnows.

Here’s the deal: Whether your favorite programming language happens to be Go, Scala, Java, or Python—those being the languages I’m most comfortable with—or something else entirely, you owe it to yourself to check out just how well the craft of refactoring has aged (and continues to do so) and how well it’s been, dare I say, (re)packaged in an eminently programming language-neutral narrative that is the slick, new (second) edition.

Well done, Mr. Fowler. You rock.

I wonder if your reaction, dear Reader, will be like mine: POW!

Help For Reflux Symptoms 🐢

Before signing off for now, I might as well slip in a thought edgewise: This essay was going to be called “Refactor Redux Reflux.” (Fancy that!) In the nick of time, though, better judgment—who knows wherefrom that ethereal sort of thing can be had—convinced me otherwise.

So what you get is reductionist “Refactor Redux”. No acid reflux.

Oh, and as an eventually consistent public service, I should add that the Surgeon General of America advises that acid reflux should always be treated at the very first signs of reflux symptoms. Refactor that, will you?

Are We Done Yet? 📣

And we’re done.

Or something; that’s for sure. Unless, that is, you peer into the pic below (rendered daguerreotype by yours truly) and take in the inklings of another essay in the wings, a fabled one which, when it’s born, would like to be known to the world as—and I suggest you take a deep breath here—”Working Memory for the Working Programmer.”

(Oh, speaking of memory, brownie points for anyone who spots Vladimir Nabokov’s Speak, Memory: An Autobiography that’s suitably anchored to my Mac keyboard in the pic below).

But that’s another story; for another time, for another day. I’m telling you in complete sincerity—so Exhibit A is provided below for the hard-nosed skeptics out there who don’t think much of sincerity—that I turned to look for that very story, but memory can be elusively sieve-like at times, and…

It was gone: POOF!