Now that we have had a warm-up with the sprout method technique, let's explore another use case for it. We'll focus on another crucial aspect of refactoring: identifying and addressing methods that do too much.

This lesson will guide us through the process of recognizing overloaded methods and using the sprout method to refactor them, ensuring our code remains clean, efficient, and maintainable.

Methods that handle multiple responsibilities can be challenging to manage and understand. These overloaded methods often violate the single responsibility principle, which states that a method should have only one reason to change. Recognizing such methods is the first step in refactoring. We should look for methods that perform several distinct tasks or have multiple logical sections. These are indicators that a method might be doing too much and could benefit from refactoring.

Overloaded methods can lead to several problems. They reduce code readability, making it difficult for developers to understand the method's purpose at a glance. This complexity can also increase the likelihood of bugs, as changes to one part of the method might inadvertently affect another.

The sprout method offers a structured approach to refactoring overloaded methods. By extracting portions of a method into new, focused methods, we can adhere to the single responsibility principle. Here's a step-by-step guide:

1. Identify Distinct Responsibilities: We examine the method to identify different tasks it performs.
2. Create New Methods: For each distinct responsibility, we create a new method that encapsulates that functionality. Even if it's a single line, extracting it enhances clarity and maintainability. This allows us to give the logic a descriptive name and provides a convenient place to expand functionality in the future.
3. Refactor the Original Method: We replace the extracted logic in the original method with calls to the new methods, ensuring it remains focused and concise.