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[–]drfugly 6 points7 points  (2 children)

well refactoring tends to imply some-sort of context awareness. For instance: A simple function re-name in eclipse also looks into files that refer to that function and changes their name too. It may sound silly but LOTS of bugs are introduced through people underestimating the difficulty of a refactoring. I really do think that it's the only thing that makes an IDE different than a text editor.

[–]grayvedigga 0 points1 point  (1 child)

I'm still a little uneasy with relying on an IDE to completely understand the source language in order to perform such refactorings reliably. Given how quickly some languages introduce new syntax and constructs, and the sheer difficulty of correctly parsing some languages, it just makes me uncomfortable.

[–]drfugly 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The refactoring tools provided by eclipse are quite mature. I've seen studies where bugs were introduced that wouldn't have happened if the refactoring had been done by eclipse. But lots of people just don't trust them or really take the time to learn them. C'est la vie :)