Automatic Refactoring

I completely don't know what an automatic refactoring tool can do for me, but this account is more what I'd expect.

I don't use too many programming tools beyond Ant and vi(1), so I think really hard about everything and try to avoid refactoring, and if I end up doing any refactoring, it's by hand. This could very well be the reason I get overwhelmed at times and wonder if I'm doing things the right way. I'm tempted to grab Netbeans or Eclipse and just see what they can do to my projects automatically. Maybe it'll lend some clarity, or maybe I'll break things or get hung up on not having "vi keys". :)

I wonder if with proper refactoring tools, I could more easily grow an application from simplicity to complexity. I've just been starting with an overly-complex design to accomodate it later. I'd write my whole app in JSP first, then refactor the logic into servlets, then refactor the business logic into session beans, then refactor the data persistence into entity beans. That doesn't sound so likely, but some middle ground could be more appropriate.


Filed Under: Java