Refactor It Everyday

3 minutes read

Whenever you get through the finish line of a story or ticket, there are always emotions involved, you can either feel relieved, fascinating, end up admiring your code by looking at it again and again, or sharing your finding with your team and even better publicly.

Whichever kind you belong to, you can always improve every single day of your life, it doesn’t matter if you’re already managing multiple public repos or you’re just a beginner, the following activity will help you to become better at coding.

Activity

Requirements: Pen & Paper

Time Needed: 3-10 minutes

Repeat: Everyday you code

Steps:

1. Note down the best time you’re free, after work, family commitments and entertainment time.
2. Checkout the branch of any ticket you’ve worked with TODAY.
3. Just go through each line of code thoroughly, when I say thoroughly it means every single line matters.
4. Now write one sentence against each of these questions:
   • Can I reduce the amount of code I’ve written and still keep it verbose enough?
   • Is my code telling a story that can be read by anyone?
   • Can I share this code publicly? If not what needs to change before doing that?
   • Are there any design patterns that solve the same problem I solved today? [Research]
   • If building this same feature from scratch what should I be changing? [Research]
   • Is there any other technology stack or library that’s doing something I did in my code? [Research]

That’s it you’re done for the day, remember to note down your findings

Plan of Action

Requirements: Your Favourite Code Editor

Time Needed: 1 hour

Repeat: Once in a week

Steps:

1. Go through your list of the week you jotted down earlier during activity, see which feature interests you more.
2. Re-implement it in a way that:
   • It uses less amount of code than your existing implementation.
   • It tells an interesting story that can be read by any coder.
   • It uses different design patterns than the ones you used earlier.
   • If there’s a need scrap existing implementation and implement it from scratch.
   • Optionally if you’re interested in some other stack, implement the same feature in there.
3. Share your findings with your team mates and flaunt about it, if you can’t, REPEAT until you can.

Conclusion

Repeat your activity every single day you code, no matter what.

Apply plan of action once every week.

If you have questions you can reach out to me at  uc@thebettercoder.com. I always reply to all the emails within 2 hours.

Now about me, I’m Usman Chaudhry, a demon-ridden implementer aka crazy coder who loves to turn ideas into reality by translating imagination into code. I’m a senior software architect with over 10 years of experience programming in various tech stacks, I’ve held positions ranging from Developer to CTO, and pretty much everything in between. Most of my work still revolves around coding.

Want a curated plan of action for yourself? 

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