# Why We Refactor? Confessions of GitHub Contributors

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1607.02459 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.02459/

## Key facts

- Cited by 10 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 8 Jul 2016.

## Built on by (most cited first, 10 of 10)

- [Agentic Refactoring: An Empirical Study of AI Coding Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.04824/) (2025)
- [ChatGPT: A Study on its Utility for Ubiquitous Software Engineering Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.16837/) (2023)
- [MANTRA: Enhancing Automated Method-Level Refactoring with Contextual RAG and Multi-Agent LLM Collaboration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.14340/) (2025)
- [EM-Assist: Safe Automated ExtractMethod Refactoring with LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.20551/) (2024)
- [What Were You Thinking? An LLM-Driven Large-Scale Study of Refactoring Motivations in Open-Source Projects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.07763/) (2025)
- [Novice Developers' Perspectives on Adopting LLMs for Software Development: A Systematic Literature Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.07556/) (2025)
- [Leveraging LLMs, IDEs, and Semantic Embeddings for Automated Move Method Refactoring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.20934/) (2025)
- [SQuaD: The Software Quality Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.11265/) (2025)
- [Teaching Code Refactoring Using LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.09332/) (2025)
- [Which Alert Removals are Beneficial?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.21322/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Refactoring is a widespread practice that helps developers to improve the maintainability and readability of their code. However, there is a limited number of studies empirically investigating the actual motivations behind specific refactoring operations applied by developers. To fill this gap, we monitored Java projects hosted on GitHub to detect recently applied refactorings, and asked the developers to ex- plain the reasons behind their decision to refactor the code. By applying thematic analysis on the collected responses, we compiled a catalogue of 44 distinct motivations for 12 well-known refactoring types. We found that refactoring activity is mainly driven by changes in the requirements and much less by code smells. Extract Method is the most versatile refactoring operation serving 11 different purposes. Finally, we found evidence that the IDE used by the developers affects the adoption of automated refactoring tools.