lately i’ve been thinking about how teams treat refactoring.
a lot of times it gets pushed into a “nice to have” bucket, or it becomes this separate side project that never really gets prioritized.
but here’s the thing every time we ship code, we’re making trade-offs. and if we don’t clean up, simplify, or restructure along the way, we’re just piling up hidden costs for the future.
refactoring isn’t extra work. it’s part of building the actual thing. treating it as “separate” almost guarantees it never happens until it becomes a massive headache.
how do you all handle this in your teams? do you bake refactoring into normal delivery, or do you plan it as its own track?
.