Re:I don’t buy “duplication is cheaper than the wrong abstra...
by cratermoon on Thursday August 31, 2023 @12:36AM
(#37332512)
> I don't think DRY means to remove all similar looking lines of code and put that behind a procedure.
Applying DRY primarily to structural duplication never occurred to me, and only this discussion brought this way of thinking to my attention. It's always been about semantic duplication to me. Often, but not necessarily, semantically duplicate code has structurally duplicate lines of code.
But now I think I understand why some junior programmers I consulted for denied that their system was rampant with the duplication I was seeing. To them, the code was different because it looked different; that it all was doing more or less the same thing, but with different inputs, seemed lost on them. I have a vague recollection of one of them saying something about "parameterizing" the code, and then dismissing it.
I'm going to have to dig through my notes from that gig to see if I can better clarify to myself the implications of the focus on only structural duplication and why it might lead a programmer to overlook very obvious opportunities for removing semantic duplication, or not understand how to fix it even if they do see it.
Applying DRY primarily to structural duplication never occurred to me, and only this discussion brought this way of thinking to my attention. It's always been about semantic duplication to me. Often, but not necessarily, semantically duplicate code has structurally duplicate lines of code.
But now I think I understand why some junior programmers I consulted for denied that their system was rampant with the duplication I was seeing. To them, the code was different because it looked different; that it all was doing more or less the same thing, but with different inputs, seemed lost on them. I have a vague recollection of one of them saying something about "parameterizing" the code, and then dismissing it.
I'm going to have to dig through my notes from that gig to see if I can better clarify to myself the implications of the focus on only structural duplication and why it might lead a programmer to overlook very obvious opportunities for removing semantic duplication, or not understand how to fix it even if they do see it.