Refactoring With Python

Python has some nice features for refactoring:

• no seagull wings (i.e. { and }) to move around
• simple inheritance syntax makes it easy to change class structures
• no header files to maintain
• everything is first-class object
• you can play with namespaces (substituting a module/class/.. with a mock module/class/.. is a piece of cake) and change/modify modules/classes/objects in run-time.
• it has named parameters with default values (easy when need to add parameters but you don't want to break other calls)
• it has very strong reflection support

I am truly hooked on PyCharm - despite the rest of it is a peesa-crap JavaLanguage editor that's slow and fills my swapper file up with billions of pcodes that I will never use. It has ExtractVariableRefactor? and ExtractMethodRefactor. I don't _want_ to do any more advanced refactors automatically... --PhlIp

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Things to watch out for:

• As with similar dynamically typed languages, Python has fewer compile-time checks to catch things like typos on RenameMethod. Good UnitTests minimize your risk here.

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See BicycleRepairMan, PythonRefactorings

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CategoryPython CategoryRefactoring