Comment by Stratoscope

That article doesn't make a compelling case.

It suggests taking this code:

  // square root of n with Newton-Raphson approximation
  r = n / 2;
  while ( abs( r - (n/r) ) > t ) {
      r = 0.5 * ( r + (n/r) );
  }

  System.out.println( "r = " + r );

And refactoring it to this function:

  private double SquareRootApproximation(n) {
      r = n / 2;
      while ( abs( r - (n/r) ) > t ) {
          r = 0.5 * ( r + (n/r) );
      }
      return r;
  }

  System.out.println( "r = " + SquareRootApproximation(r) );

I'm all for this refactoring, but something was lost in the process. What kind of square root approximation is being used? Does the algorithm have a name? What would I search for if I wanted to read more about it? That information was in the original comment.