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Discussion on: How about a refactorthon?

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Ka Wai Cheung

Hey Ben,

Great point -- "The nascent stage of a project kind of seems like the worst time to get so many people working together. " Agreed. Devs need time to formulate their own opinions and approach especially when there's nothing running yet.

I think peer involvement is particularly important in refactoring as a way of helping each other validate their approach. Also, like "normal" pair programming, it's a way to keep each other on track at the task-at-hand. It's really easy to get into rabbit holes as you refactor and suddenly have a whole bunch of things in a half-refactored state. The social aspect can mitigate that.

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Ben Halpern

Oh yeah, definitely. One frustration I run into with pair programming on feature building is that we often hit a wall where there is some research that needs to happen or some issue that is more comfortably worked out in solitude (depends on your personality, of course). With efforts of pure refactoring, everything is already "done" in a sense, so there is less likely to be that progress wall that has lead me towards the tendency breaking off and working through issues on our own.