smells and heuristics introduction

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Introduction

In his wonderful book Refactoring, Martin Fowler identified many different "Code Smells." The list that follows includes many of Martin's smells and adds many more of my own. It also includes other pearls and heuristics that I use to practice my trade.

I compiled this list by walking through several different programs and refactoring them. As I made each change, I asked myself why I made that change and then wrote the reason down here. The result is a rather long list of things that smell bad to me when I read code.

This list is meant to be read from top to bottom and also to be used as a reference.

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