The original Refactoring book by Martin Fowler had a big impact on how I thought about writing software. I’d used the refactoring tools in Smalltalk, but the book changed the way I thought about refactoring and gave names to many new refactorings. This Ruby edition of the book is highly anticipated. I received my copy at a drawing in our local Ruby user’s group. Part of the deal was you had to write a review (you are reading it) in exchange for the book. Nearly everyone at the meeting wanted a crack at the book. The authors suggest that if you have the original work, you probably shouldn’t purchase this new edition. I don’t agree. There is plenty of new content with around 20 new refactorings and a few new code smells to make the difference worthwhile. There is a tremendous amount of thoughtful Ruby code snippets inserted throughout the text. In fact, this is one of those books that is great for everyone on a team to have a copy. It is the kind of book that can be used to raise t...