Powerful software

Published on 13 May 2014.

Today’s though is about the balance between making progress and refactoring.

When I’ve written a piece of software and I can easily make it solve the next problem, I feel that the software is powerful. It feels as if it was written precisely to solve the next problem. Then once I have solved a few of the problems that were easy to solve, the next problem becomes harder to solve. It no longer feels like the software is powerful. That’s when I refactor. Or, that’s when I think I should refactor, but not always do because solving the next problem is more interesting. But eventually I have to refactor, or else I feel I can make no progress because the software does not feel powerful.

For me, it’s easy to feel good about powerful software. But it’s not as easy to feel good about making it powerful (refactoring). For me, I think it’s mostly because it’s more fun to make progress, and refactoring does not feel as progress. However, solving the next problem is so much more fun when you have powerful software.


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