Appreciate the kind words! You’re not dumb at all. I don’t know about the “proper” definition of refactor, but in my mind it’s where you take a system that’s already been built and rebuild parts of it (or all of it). And I think the time to refactor comes when you are either continuously fighting a system you designed or when you are constantly telling yourself “I would like to do that, but it’s not worth the time.”

The major system I am refactoring is the rendering of comp pages. Right now, each comp page can only get rendered by one tool on my website and while it does store SOME data about the comp, a lot of data is simply used during the script’s execution to build the page and then is scrapped. The result is I can’t update a comp without using this tool — it’s a bottleneck for all updates on my website. Where does that cause issues?

1) If I want to remove an augment from all comps, like Firesale, because it’s been disabled, I must go through all comps one by one and remove it. Not worth my time, so you end up with augments that are disabled in comp pages for over a month.

2) Let’s say Yunara’s BiS changed like it did this set from Rageblade + IE + Kraken to Rageblade + IE + Titan’s and then changed again to Rageblade + IE + Striker. Or let’s say Flickerblade gets nerfed + Yunara’s AP scaling is worse so Flickerblade is worse on Yunara than before. I want to update Yunara across the website. Well turns out because that tool only allows me to update 1 comp at a time, I need to go and update Ionia Yunara, Freljord Yunara, Yasuo reroll, a random variation in Zaun Warwick one at a time. Realistically I update the important comp (Ionia Yunara) and maybe update one or two of the others and the rest remain out of date. It’s too much of a hassle.

3) Let’s say most fast 8 comps use the same econ augments. Same issue again. Once again, I have to add those augments one by one to each fast 8 comp. Oh they nerfed one of them and it’s no longer good? Better go update every fast 8 comp on the website!

You get the point. The existing system is “functional” and I CAN do everything I want to in it, but realistically there are somethings I won’t do because it’s too much of a hassle. Refactoring is about looking at the flaws of an existing system, realizing where it is causing pain points, and alleviating those pain points so they aren’t too much of a hassle anymore. But it means dismantling what is already working (albeit with flaws) so you can rebuild it without those flaws.

That makes it quite time consuming — it’s not a small change. My entire website was designed to work through this 1 tool and now I’m saying uh I don’t like that anymore, time to make everything work differently. Sometimes it means small changes in a bunch of places, sometimes it means completely getting rid of things and replacing it with new. But in summary, refactoring is about taking something that works with “pain points” and removing those “pain points” to enable improved work flows in the future.