For those who aren’t familiar with the term, refactoring is the process of rearranging the innards of a body of code without changing its external behavior. This isn’t a discussion about refactoring techniques, though, but instead about how refactoring plays into code reviews.

Coders have differing opinions about seemingly inconsequential aspects of their work, like code style.

• whether to use spaces or tabs for indentation
• where to introduce blank lines
• how to format comments: end-of-line, single line, block
• whether to comment at all
• which bracket style to use: GNU or 1TBS or Java or Stroustrup or …
• how to order import / include statements
• how long lines may be, and where to break them

As you gain experience (read: get older), you realize that what’s important isn’t which choice is “correct”, but using the same choice consistently across your team’s code. (If you are a lone coder, it’s your world, go nuts!) Establishing a house style makes it easier, mentally, to read over all of the code, regardless of who wrote it.