About Refactor

May you live in interesting times is, famously, a curse.

Well, we live in interesting times.

Embrace, retreat or recoil from it - this is the world as we are presented with it. So what are you going to do about it?

Refactor is fundamentally action-oriented.

We’re less interested in descriptions of what ails us than we are in prescriptions, however rudimentary.

Be normative.

We’re here for the messy middle.

We’re here for maintenance mode.

We’re here for what comes next.

Guiding Principles

We have a lot of things we wish were different.

And we think the best way to complain about it is to demonstrate how we wish it were instead.

Complain about the way other people make software by making software. -Andre Torrez

We strive to be an example of this with the datasets we help collect and academic research we support at Refactor.

As a small, independent publication, we think the most impactful things we can publish are:

  • First-person essays written by the people who build interesting technologies
  • Prototypes of new systems
  • Community-compiled datasets

    • You don't need to be technical to contribute. Ask your barber if people are bringing him AI reference images and write about that. Talk to the bodega guy selling PowerBall tickets and interview the people buying them. If anyone could have looked up all the information in your piece online already, it's probably not a good fit for Refactor.

    Our standard is that you are making a novel contribution, no matter how small.

    That might look like:

  • A description of an experiment you ran
  • A small vibe-coded simulation
  • An analogy between two domains that aren't often connected
  • An iPhone Shortcut you made
  • What you found when clicking all the links in a company's Terms and Conditions

    • We are interested in the everyday experiences of everyday people. You don't need to be a professional or an industry insider. You just need to be curious. Virginia Woolf wrote about a character she called Mrs. Brown, a shabby old lady who is a stand-in for the human condition.

    Technology is neither inherently good nor bad, but the choices we make about how to develop and deploy it have profound consequences. Our role is to inform those choices.

    Our Editorial Philosophy

    We believe no idea is too complex to be communicated clearly.

    We believe good writing comes from good editing.

    We believe your time and effort is valuable.

    Good editing requires a genuine collaboration between editors and authors. We work with our contributors as partners in developing their ideas, not just polishing their prose.

    Even if a piece is not a fit for Refactor, it may be a perfect fit somewhere else, and we want to help you get it there.

    We strive to provide useful, actionable, and informed feedback on all drafts you send us. We do not have a form rejection letter. At least one editor will read every piece submitted, in full.

    Have questions about our mission or want to contribute to it?

    📧 We'd love to hear from you.