While [T] and I were working together there was quite a lot of freedom. We were, certainly for a period, quite freely refactoring things. When we recruited people we were very much focused on building a real live service. Suddenly things became a lot less fluid and refactoring became quite an issue.
I remember being challenged by the developers who were involved in that early stage. I know one of their contentions was that we were not refactoring. It became very clear that I didn’t get refactoring at that time. Some of it I was doing… but I didn’t get it enough, and I was definitely one of the obstacles to them being able to do some of the refactoring that they wanted to do.
It took me years really. It was another developer who joined who really educated me into seeing what it meant. I had had the same with test first. It was like I half got it but I didn’t get it. When Kent taught me, it was like really understanding the freedom that I had from my tests and so on and going “Wow! You mean I could really go and… yeah, okay it’s completely different.” “Yeah, but it’s still passed the test” “Yes, okay, you’re allowed to do this.” [LAUGHS]
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