Refactoring in VB.NET - Suggestions As Requested
OK, I can't believe how much traffic has surrounded the whole VB.NET and Refactoring topic. The reason why I can't believe the amount of traffic is that the whole thing was kicked off with the following where Paul Vick states:
Some of these features are already slated to be included in the VB.NET Whidbey release, such as symbolic rename, and for others we're open customer feedback as to which ones above they think are important. Or if there are ones you don't see there, we want to hear about them as well! If you leave comments on this entry, I'll make sure they get forwarded to Jay, the PM in charge of this area. (The more specific you are, the better. “Do everything that C# is doing.” is helpful, but “Reorder parameters is the most important to me because blah, blah, blah.” helps us even more!)
Now here's what is very interesting about this whole thing. Everyone is so focused on the fact that it 'might' not be called 'refactoring' in VB.NET. However, NOONE seems to be focusing on what is important. I'm just as guilty as anyone, so after some pondering on the subject, here goes (WARNING: I know very little about 'refactoring'):
Symbolic rename
I'm assuming this means the ability to select some variable, method, property, class name, etc. and rename it globally in a project. (If so, how is this any different from Find and Replace)?
Extract method
I claim ignorance... not sure what this is.
Extract interface
I claim ignorance... not sure what this is.
Encapsulate field
I claim ignorance... not sure what this is.
Reorder parameters
I find this very cool. There's been times when I've built something, added to the parameters list and then decided that it really would make more sense to reoder the parameters list.
Remove parameter
Another excellent idea. Again, for the same reasons as 'Reorder parameters'.
Add parameter
This is somewhat interesting. I suppose I have caught myself in the situation for this type of tool, however, I use the ability to do function overloading to accomplish this. However, it would be useful in the long run.
Promote local to parameter
I don't see this one as being useful, considering it could be easily accomplish by having an 'Add Parameter' option. Once the new parameter exists, remove the local variable.
Also, for clarification, as I stated earlier, I don't care what it's called in the end. As long as it's easy to get to, works as expected, and makes sense on the placement/treatment... call it whatever. Refactoring seems like a decent enough name. I've even asked several people who are just beginning to move to VB.NET from VB6 to guess what 'Refactoring' is. All of them had a pretty good guess as to what it was, so I don't think that that term would throw anyone using VB.NET.