What exactly is refactoring and how is it different from compiling?

Question

I have a reasonable understanding of compiling, don't understand refactoring so much. When/why do you want to refactor? You must compile java code to run it, but I don't think refactoring is mandatory....

Answer 1

Hope this helps.
https://www.sololearn.com/discuss/331688/?ref=app
Refactoring is all about improving the code.
it can be change/rewrite code to comply with coding standards, performance fixes and many more.

Compiling is converting (a program) into a machine-code or lower-level form in which the program can be executed.

Compiling and refactoring are two different things.

Answer 2

Refactoring is useful to make code easier to read and easier to maintain. At first , when trying to solve a problem you may only care about getting it to work. Once it works, look at your code and see how you could do it better. Think about renaming things to more clearly state their purpose, or about removing code duplication, or extracting parts of methods to make them smaller.