Book Image

Refactoring with C#

By : Matt Eland
5 (1)
Book Image

Refactoring with C#

5 (1)
By: Matt Eland

Overview of this book

Software projects start as brand-new greenfield projects, but invariably become muddied in technical debt far sooner than you’d expect. In Refactoring with C#, you'll explore what technical debt is and how it arises before walking through the process of safely refactoring C# code using modern tooling in Visual Studio and more recent C# language features using C# 12 and .NET 8. This book will guide you through the process of refactoring safely through advanced unit testing with XUnit and libraries like Moq, Snapper, and Scientist .NET. You'll explore maintainable code through SOLID principles and defensive coding techniques made possible in newer versions of C#. You'll also find out how to run code analysis and write custom Roslyn analyzers to detect and resolve issues unique to your code. The nature of coding is changing, and you'll explore how to use AI with the GitHub Copilot Chat to refactor, test, document, and generate code before ending with a discussion about communicating technical debt to leadership and getting organizational buy-in to refactor your code in enterprise organizations and in agile teams. By the end of this book, you'll understand the nature of refactoring and see how you can safely, effectively, and repeatably pay down the technical debt in your application while adding value to your business.
Table of Contents (24 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Part 1: Refactoring with C# in Visual Studio
7
Part 2: Refactoring Safely
13
Part 3: Advanced Refactoring with AI and Code Analysis
18
Part 4: Refactoring in the Enterprise

Introducing refactoring

Refactoring is one of those words that doesn’t make a lot of sense to newer programmers, but here’s a simple definition:

Refactoring is the act of changing the shape or form of code without changing its functionality or behavior.

There are two key concepts here:

  • The first concept is that refactoring is an effort to improve the maintainability of existing code. Sometimes, restructuring means introducing a new variable, method, or class. Other times, refactoring simply changes how individual lines of code are arranged or which language features are used. Even something as simple as renaming a variable could be considered a small act of refactoring.
  • The second concept in this definition is that refactoring does not alter the behavior of the code in question. Refactoring is a structural change done to bring some piece of technical merit without altering the existing behavior of your code. If a method typically returned a certain value...