Using Code Metrics to Target Refactoring

Often times, deciding what code to refactor (rewrite) is based upon the code's smell, a subjective determination by developers. Learn about and see examples of static analysis techniques such as cyclomatic complexity, depth of inheritance, and fan-in/fan-out to augment developers' instinct with real data. For example, cyclomatic complexity is adept at spotting methods containing too much conditional logic. Deep hierarchy trees, problematic for testing, can be broken out into separate objects. Fan-in/fan-out analysis is effective at pinpointing brittle code that you should refactor. Armed with new methods to objectively spot smelly code and replace it with proven patterns, your code base will become more stable and maintainable.