For many people, refactoring is a simple code transformation they click on in a context menu or via a keyboard shortcut. The widespread availability of automated refactoring should have made oversized classes and long-winded functions a thing of the past. But it hasn't.

Having a tool is only part of the solution: knowing what to do with it and how to use it well matters. In this talk, we'll revisit what refactoring is (and isn't) and emphasise the idea that refactoring should be considered a design process and not just a clean-up click.

Target Audience: Developers, Architects, Tech Leads
Prerequisites: Programming experience
Level: Advanced

Extended Abstract:
For many people, refactoring is a simple code transformation they click on in a context menu or via a keyboard shortcut. They can extract, inline, replace, move, rename, etc. at will. The widespread availability of automated refactoring should have made oversized classes and long-winded functions a thing of the past. But it hasn't.

Having a tool is only part of the solution: knowing what to do with it and how to use it well is what makes the bigger difference. Refactoring is often mentioned in the context of agile development, test-driven development and legacy code, but beyond saying that it should happen, there is often not much focus on how and why.

In this talk, we'll revisit what refactoring is (and isn't), examine what practical and social obstacles refactoring faces, explore the idea that refactoring should be considered a design process and not just a clean-up click, and that most interesting refactorings are not necessarily automated.