Detecting Refactoring Diligence

We’re really at a point in the industry where all developers should be aware of the importance of continuous refactoring. It’s easy to look at deteriorating code bases and get the sense that if only we’d done large refactorings along the way things would be better. But, code goes bad slowly and it happens through a predictable process. We add code to existing methods, making them longer, and we add methods to existing classes making them bigger. In the former case, the effect is particularly...