💃 Refactor First, Scale Safely 🕺

Good morning, Salesforce Nerds! Those of us in this ecosystem long enough already know …

Legacy Salesforce code almost never fails because it’s slow. It fails because no one understands it well enough to change it safely. 🤔 

That’s the core lesson behind the refactoring patterns popularized in Refactoring.

Refactoring is not about squeezing milliseconds out of Apex. ❌ 

It’s about making intent obvious so performance, scale, and reliability can follow without fear. ✅ 

On a governor-limited platform, this distinction matters.

Refactoring is how teams modernize Apex incrementally without rewrites, regressions, or high-risk releases.

It’s how brittle triggers evolve into durable services. 💪 

And it’s how “just one more if” stops becoming a permanent architecture decision.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

💃 Refactor First, Scale Safely 🕺

• Refactor Incrementally

• Extract Intent First

• Replace Conditionals Cleanly

• Fix Ownership Boundaries

• Refactoring That Scales

SMALL STEPS, SAFE CHANGE

REFACTOR INCREMENTALLY

Refactoring is a risk-managed, incremental practice.

You are not redesigning the system. 🚫 You are reshaping it while keeping behavior identical. 🧩 

In Salesforce terms, that usually means:

• Tests pass before and after.

• No schema changes required.

• No new business logic introduced.

• Same data outcomes, same side effects.

A common starting point is the Extract Method.

Legacy Apex tends to pack querying, branching, and mutation into one dense block. 😰 

Before:

if (opp.StageName == 'Closed Won' && opp.Amount > 50000 &&
    opp.Account.Industry != 'Education') {
    // query users
    // calculate commission
    // insert records
}

After:

if (isEligibleForCommission(opp)) {
    awardCommission(opp);
}

Nothing is faster yet. Nothing is optimized. But intent is now explicit. 🧠 

And explicit intent is what enables safe change later.

UNDERSTAND BEFORE OPTIMIZING

EXTRACT INTENT FIRST

One of the most practical refactoring lessons is this: you can’t optimize what you can’t explain. 💯 

Salesforce teams often chase performance fixes inside unreadable logic.

That’s backwards. The most valuable refactors extract why before touching how. 👈️ 

Common intent-revealing refactors include:

• Extract Method

• Rename Method

• Introduce Explaining Variable

• Split Loop

Before:

for (Opportunity o : opps) {
    if (o.StageName == 'Closed Won' && o.Amount > 10000 &&
        o.CloseDate <= Date.today().addDays(7)) {
        total += o.Amount * 0.1;
    }
}

After:

for (Opportunity o : opps) {
    if (isCommissionable(o)) {
        total += calculateCommission(o);
    }
}

Now optimization becomes obvious.

Calculations can move out of loops. Eligibility can be cached. Queries can be consolidated. 😋 

Governor-safe performance emerges because the code finally says what it means.

POLYMORPHISM BEATS BRANCHING

REPLACE CONDITIONALS CLEANLY

Salesforce codebases accumulate conditionals fast. 🏁🏎️💨 

Record types, picklists, statuses, regions. Each new rule adds another if/else.

This is where Replace Conditional with Polymorphism delivers immediate value. 💰️ 

Before:

if (acct.Type == 'Customer') {
    applyCustomerRules(acct);
} else if (acct.Type == 'Partner') {
    applyPartnerRules(acct);
} else if (acct.Type == 'Prospect') {
    applyProspectRules(acct);
}

After:

AccountRules rules = AccountRulesFactory.forType(acct.Type);
rules.apply(acct);

Each implementation owns its logic, queries, and limit footprint. Adding a new type no longer risks breaking existing behavior. 🎉 

More importantly, governor impact becomes localized instead of scattered across branches.

This refactor doesn’t just improve readability. 📈 It directly reduces risk in bulk and async contexts.

PUT LOGIC WHERE IT BELONGS

FIX OWNERSHIP BOUNDARIES

Another widely used refactoring is Move Method. In Salesforce, misplaced logic is a quiet scalability killer. 🤡 

Triggers doing calculations. 😡 

Services mutating unrelated objects. 🫢 

Invocable Apex that “knows everything.” 😬 

Before:

// OpportunityService
public static void updateAccountMetrics(Opportunity opp) {
    Account a = [SELECT Id, Score__c FROM Account WHERE Id = :opp.AccountId];
    a.Score__c += opp.Amount;
    update a;
}

After:

// AccountService
public static void applyOpportunityImpact(Account a, Opportunity opp) {
    a.Score__c += opp.Amount;
}

Ownership is now clear. DML can be consolidated.

Flow can orchestrate without embedding business logic. Async strategies become trivial. 🚀 

Clear boundaries reduce coupling, which directly reduces accidental governor consumption.

This is also where Flow shines as an orchestration layer while Apex services execute business rules. 🧠 

LONGEVITY OVER HEROICS

REFACTORING THAT SCALES

Let’s end with a few myths worth retiring. 🎯 

❌ Refactoring does not slow delivery. Unclear code does.

❌ Refactoring is not rewriting. If behavior changes, it isn’t refactoring.

❌ Optimization does not come first. Understanding does.

In Salesforce, refactoring is how teams earn the right to scale. It’s how Apex becomes bulk-safe, Flow becomes orchestration, and automation survives growth instead of fighting it.

These patterns endure because they work. 💯 

Clean code doesn’t just read better. It survives longer, scales further, and fails less often. ✨ 

SOUL FOOD

Today’s Principle

and now....Salesforce Memes