unior Devs Write Code. Senior Devs Delete It.

Source: Dev.to

Overview

We often glorify adding new features, shipping fast, and “getting things done.” But sometimes, the most productive thing you can do is stop, look at your codebase, and admit: “This is a mess.”

For the past few months I’ve been building DotShare, a VS Code extension that helps developers share code snippets to social media. It works great—users love it—but under the hood it was a nightmare.

This is the story of how I refactored a massive 2000+ line monolithic file into a pristine Clean Architecture in 24 hours.

🎥 The Transformation (Watch in 30s)

Words are cheap. Here is the actual footage of deleting 2,000 lines of spaghetti code. Pure satisfaction.

🍝 The Problem: The “Monolithic Class” Trap

I fell into the classic trap. I started with one file: DotShareProvider.ts.

• At first it was ~200 lines—“manageable,” I thought.

• Then I added LinkedIn support, Telegram, AI caption generation…

• Before I knew it, I was staring at a 2000‑line beast.

• The logic was tightly coupled with the UI.

• Authentication tokens were handled in the same class as UI rendering.

• Debugging meant scrolling… and scrolling… and scrolling.

🧹 The Solution: Clean Architecture

I decided to stop “patching” and start “engineering.” I spent 24 hours rewriting the core architecture from scratch.

1. Breaking the Monolith

I moved away from the single‑file approach and adopted a modular structure based on the Single Responsibility Principle (SRP).

Services – pure business logic

• HistoryService
• AnalyticsService

Handlers – bridge between UI and services

• PostHandler
• ConfigHandler

UI – strictly for rendering

• DotShareProvider

Result
Instead of one file doing everything, the project now consists of nine focused files, each doing exactly one thing well.

🛡️ The Security Upgrade

The most critical part was securing authentication tokens. Previously they were stored in globalState (plain JSON). I migrated everything to VS Code’s SecretStorage API.

// Old Way (Insecure)
this.context.globalState.update('linkedinToken', token);

// New Way (Enterprise Security)
await this.context.secrets.store('linkedinToken', token);