Considering reasons to refactor

There are some common reasons you may want to refactor your library. One of the primary reasons is to simplify your library. Simplifying libraries can take a multitude of different forms, but a couple of common simplifications are realizing that in two or more places in your library, you are making the same change for the same reason. This is a case where you may want to add an abstraction for that type of change. Such an abstraction could be a new method, a new class or module, or possibly a modification of an existing method.

Simplification can also work in the opposite direction, where you have a completely unnecessary abstraction that now makes sense to remove, and then inline the behavior into the places where the abstraction is currently used. This often occurs when the abstraction was created before there was a real need for it, or when the need for it previously existed, but there is no longer a need for it. For example, say you originally...