Editing Code refactoring (section)

==History==
The first known use of the term "refactoring" in the published literature was in a September, 1990 article by [[William Opdyke]] and [[Ralph Johnson (computer scientist)|Ralph Johnson]].<ref name="opdyke90">{{cite conference
  | first = William F.
  | last = Opdyke
  | author-link = William Opdyke
  |author2=Johnson, Ralph E.
  | title = Refactoring: An Aid in Designing Application Frameworks and Evolving Object-Oriented Systems
  | book-title = Proceedings of the Symposium on Object Oriented Programming Emphasizing Practical Applications (SOOPPA)
  | publisher = ACM
  |date=September 1990
}}</ref>
Although refactoring code has been done informally for decades, [[Bill Griswold|William Griswold]]'s 1991 Ph.D. dissertation<ref name="griswold-thesis">{{cite thesis
  | first = William G
  | last = Griswold
  | author-link = Bill Griswold
  | title = Program Restructuring as an Aid to Software Maintenance
  | degree = Ph.D.
  | publisher = University of Washington
  |date=July 1991
  | url = http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~wgg/Abstracts/gristhesis.pdf
  | access-date = 2011-12-24
}}</ref>
is one of the first major academic works on refactoring functional and procedural programs, followed by [[William Opdyke]]'s 1992 dissertation<ref name="opdyke-thesis">{{cite thesis
  | first = William F
  | last = Opdyke
  | author-link = William Opdyke
  | title = Refactoring Object-Oriented Frameworks
  | degree = Ph.D.
  | publisher = University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  | date = June 1992
  | url = http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=169783
  | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20191216212919/https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=169783
  | archive-date = 2019-12-16
  | format = compressed Postscript
  | access-date = 2008-02-12
  | url-status = bot: unknown
  }}</ref>
on the refactoring of object-oriented programs,<ref name="etymology">{{cite web| url = http://martinfowler.com/bliki/EtymologyOfRefactoring.html| title = Martin Fowler, "MF Bliki: EtymologyOfRefactoring"}}</ref> although all the theory and machinery have long been available as [[program transformation]] systems. All of these resources provide a catalog of common methods for refactoring; a refactoring method has a description of how to apply the [[Scientific method|method]] and indicators for when you should (or should not) apply the method.

[[Martin Fowler (software engineer)|Martin Fowler]]'s book ''Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code'' is the canonical reference. {{According to whom|date=July 2018}}

The terms "factoring" and "factoring out" have been used in this way in the [[Forth (programming language)|Forth]] community since at least the early 1980s. Chapter Six of [[Leo Brodie (programmer)|Leo Brodie]]'s book ''[[Thinking Forth]]'' (1984)<ref>{{cite book 
 |last1=Brodie 
 |first1=Leo 
 |title=Thinking Forth 
 |year=2004 
 |isbn=0-9764587-0-5 
 |pages=171–196 
 |publisher=Fig Leaf Press, Forth Interest 
 |url=http://thinking-forth.sourceforge.net 
 |access-date=3 May 2020 
 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051216163615/http://thinking-forth.sourceforge.net/ 
 |archive-date=16 December 2005 
 |url-status=dead 
 }}</ref> is dedicated to the subject.

In extreme programming, the Extract Method refactoring technique has essentially the same meaning as factoring in Forth; to break down a "word" (or [[Function (programming)|function]]) into smaller, more easily maintained functions.

Refactorings can also be reconstructed<ref name="What-is-code-refactoring?">{{cite news
  | first = Andriy
  | last = Sokolov
  | title = What is code refactoring?
  | url = https://duecode.io/blog/what-is-code-refactoring/
  }}</ref> posthoc to produce concise descriptions of complex software changes recorded in software repositories like [[Git]].