Code Kata 4: Data Munging

This one is about reading data from a file and retrieving relevant data.
http://codekata.pragprog.com/2007/01/kata_four_data_.html

Solutions

• Part One: Weather Data
• Part Two: Football Data
• Part Three: DRY

Kata Questions

• Deciding to use regular expressions made the refactoring much more easy.
• When I wrote the second program, I definitely followed many of the things I did in the first program. This made refactoring much more easy too.
• Refactoring code to rip out common code is usually a good practice. This helps in maintainability especially when you have to change the piece of code. If it wasn't refactored, you would have to change the code in two different places and test them separately. It also becomes a candidate for reuse when you come across the same scenario. If done right, it helps with readability because it breaks code into smaller chunks. This way, you can hold less in your head. There is, however, one scenario where I find refactoring out common code is a downfall: when future requirements cause slight differences in the common code. Because we don't know all the cases we will ever handle when we refactor out common code, it is hard to account for this. However, there have been several times where future changes cause slight differences in the common code and it turned out that refactoring was a bad idea.