Improving existing code—refactoring—is one of the most common tasks you’ll face as a programmer.

  Five Lines of Code  teaches you clear and actionable refactoring rules that you can apply without relying on intuitive judgements such as “code smells.” It’s written for working developers, guiding you step by step through applying refactoring patterns to the codebase of a 2D puzzle game.

Following the author’s expert perspective—that refactoring and code smells can be learned by following a concrete set of principles—you’ll learn when to refactor your code, what patterns to apply to what problem, and the code characteristics that indicate it’s time for a rework.

Thanks to this hands-on guide, you’ll find yourself programming faster while still delivering high-quality code that your teammates will love to work with.

what''s inside

• The symptoms of bad code
• The extracting method, introducing strategy pattern, and many other refactoring patterns
• Modifying code safely, even when you don’t understand it
• Writing stable code that enables change-by-addition
• Proper compiler practices
• Writing code that needs no comments
• Real-world practices for great refactoring

about the readerFor developers who know an object-oriented programming language.

about the author Christian Clausen  works as a Technical Agile Coach teaching teams how to properly refactor their code.

Previously he worked as a software engineer on the Coccinelle semantic patching project, an automated refactoring tool. He has an MSc in computer science, and five years’ experience teaching software quality at a university level.