Please have a look at the code below:
public class Vehicle
'Not very well designed. Contains properties and functions/subs for cars, buses, tractors, planes, drivers etc.
end class
I am wanting to refactor the code so that there is a superclass (vehicle) and many subclasses. I want to do this as I go along whilst working on much higher priorities.
If I create the new classes then there will be two Vehicle classes i.e. the refactored vehicle and the old vehicle. I believe the best approach is to create a new namespace for the refactored code e.g. company.app.businesslogiclayer.automobiles.refactoredcode, company.app.datalogiclayer.automobiles.refactoredcode. Is this the correct approach?
I think you could treat your existing clas as a subclass since it already has some class-specific functionality in it and then look at the Extract Superclass refactoring. Here you would create your new super class and then move common features from the sub class to the super class.
Refactoring for Visual Basic has a nice section on Extract Super Class that you might find interesting.