Have to admit that I do think of myself as a coder, not a problem solver. According to Mike I should be writing less code.
This is why I stick with the mantra “Write less code”. Whenever I feel like something is getting bigger than it should be or more complicated than it should be, I say “Write less code”. Whenever I write so much code that it gets hard to keep it in context, I refactor, I clean it up, all the while, thinking about “Write less code”.
The biggest issue I see with the above statement, is that clients have never really seemed to be all that interested in paying you to refactor code in the middle of a project. I've had a few large WordPress sites with a bunch of custom functionality and half way through I start to loose track of what does what where. Inevitable I find duplicate (or very similar) code. Really I should be stopping and sorting it all out, but I can't do it for free and the client doesn't really want to pay for it, so what to I do?
Maybe I need to be spending more time mapping it the function of the site? Maybe I need to be taking higher end clients that realize the need to refactor midstream? Maybe I need to work on my own projects more so I can take the time I want to craft the code I want to write? Maybe I'm a whiner and need to just keep working?
How do you deal with mid-project refactoring?