13.12.2024.
Video

Engineer Explains: Refactoring Allows Developers to be Wrong

Refactoring is the way of writing code so it can be modified and revitalized with time.

“I like working in the nasties and ugliest code possible that also tends to be the most important code to business,” says Arlo Belshee, fractional CTO and Distinguished Engineer with 25+ years of experience in software engineering.

What better person to ask to explain legacy code refactoring than him?!

Junior developers starting their careers must know that refactoring is the way to modify an existing codebase to extend it and add new capabilities. This requires them to learn new techniques.

Arlo shares that his passion is restoring and revitalizing the core and most critical code elements for the business:

“As senior engineers, we know that we’re going to be wrong more than we’re going to be right. The most important thing in development, therefore, is that we make sure to create code that can be modified.”

This video is a part of ShiftMag’s video series, Engineer Explains.

We’ve asked experienced engineers to share how they would explain some basic and some less basic tech terminology to different tech job titles or at three levels of experience — from junior developer to CTO.