Defining Refactoring

I’m always a little leery of definitions because everyone has his or her own, but when you write a book you get to choose your own definitions. In this case I’m basing my definitions on the work done by Ralph Johnson’s group and assorted associates.

The first thing to say about this is that the word refactoring has two definitions depending on context. You might find this annoying (I certainly do), but it serves as yet another example of the realities of working with natural language.