refactoring

Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code
$64.99
I learned many things from this book. After reading, I felt like that I had received years of mentoring from an experienced professional. I spent one week reading this on the subway and advanced two years in professional knowledge. Time and money well spent.

Refactoring to Patterns
$64.99
I think this is a very good companion to the Design Patterns by the GoF. As the author stated in the book, the real joy of refactoring to the design patterns is to know the right time to do it. Overdoing it would do more harm than good.

The subject of computer programming would ultimately be more art than science. And to learn the real power of design patterns, in my opinion, will require years of practical experience. Reading the best books (this one included) is just the beginning.

Professional Refactoring in Visual Basic (Programmer to Programmer)
$49.99
Both the VB.NET and C# & ASP.NET Refactoring books are great. Each has it's own unique sections, while at the same time they cover the same refactorings, smells, and Object-Oriented Design Principles in detail.

I bought the VB.NET version because I have been stuck on a VB.NET project for the past 3 years (actually 3 months, but it sure feels like years).

I have not seen the weak static typing to strong dynamic typing explained so well and in such detail anywhere else. The information in this chapter teaches the developer how to use VB.NET to program a quick prototype or industrial strength applications. He goes into tremendous detail on how to properly use the Option Strict, Option Explicit, and Option Infer statements.

I was so impressed with the VB.NET version of the book that I bought the C# and ASP.NET version of the book. The C# and ASP.NET version of the book contains two chapters on refactoring ASP.NET code.

Both books have chapters on LINQ and other language enhancements, Refactoring to Patterns, Advanced Object-Oriented Concepts, Code Organization on a Large Scale, and multiple chapters on refactoring and smells. Throughout each book the author touches on Object-Oriented Design Principles. Both books have a list of all the refactorings, smells, and Object-Oriented Design Principles page numbers so they are easy to find.

The author points out that one of the motivating factors in writing these books was to give us the refactoring techniques in the languages we work in. I agree with his motivation, all the other books I have read used Java as the language and although I learned a ton from them, each language has its own subtle differences.

The author's style of writing make reading these books a pleasure. They are very well organized.

Both come with well organized and very usable code downloads.

Both of these books are highly recommended. They definitely make learning refactoring and Object-Oriented Concepts and Design Principles very enjoyable.

Refactoring Workbook
$39.99
Learning to make what you already have better WITHOUT negatively impacting the enterprise or rewriting what you already have is a key skill that this book teaches and preaches. Understanding what it means to successfully refactor something is well worth the effort, especially if you are interested in getting into the world of service oriented architecture.

Services can be refactored after they are deployed because they can maintain a consistent external interface or contract that others form dependencies to. THis allows us to apply the concepts and techniques described in this book in order to build not only increasingly robust code but also increasingly valuable code in the form of reusable services.

The author does a good job of organising the content and explaining the application through examples. This book is helping my team with a specific project that requires us to revisit but no rewrite a collection of existing components.