PyCon 2019 in Cleveland, Ohio

Sunday 1:50 p.m.–2:20 p.m. in Atrium Ballroom AB

The Refactoring Balance Beam: When to Make Changes and When to Leave it Alone

Amanda Sopkin

Description

Many developers struggle to find the balance between striving to improve existing code and letting good enough alone by accepting certain shortcomings. As a new developer to a team it can be difficult to understand existing strategies and patterns that are sometimes flat out bad (and often openly acknowledged as such). Often the result of tight deadlines or unclear specifications, even the best developers write code they later look back upon with shudders. So how do we decide when refactoring is worth it? Come learn strategies for refactoring with minimal impact, methods for working with bad code you can’t change, and strategies for knowing the difference between what is fixable and what is better left alone.