Comments on Turbulent Intellect: Don't Stop at DRY

You're absolutely right. My thoughts on respon...

2011-04-21T19:24:04.281-05:00

You're absolutely right. My thoughts on responsibility and context implicitly assume that it's not just the pure code alone that defines whether something is a repetition, but also the context. I could have done a better job of drawing that connection.

I didn't intend this post to be a complaint so much as an exhortation to look up and realize that there is more to consider than just the form of the algorithm in code. In my experience this is an issue of experience and professional or intellectual maturity. It requires a willingness to stop and think critically about what you're doing, why you're doing it, and whether it's really working as well as it could.

Your complaints about DRY are really complaints ab...

2011-04-21T13:41:01.890-05:00

Your complaints about DRY are really complaints about misapplication of DRY.

DRY Principle: "Every piece of knowledge must have a single, unambiguous, authoritative representation within a system."

Situations in which redundant code leads to better design tend to be situations in which the code repeated is really a different "piece of knowledge". And part of design is deciding when pieces of knowledge need to be distinct, even when they have the same values.

That's how I think about it, anyway. (It sounds like you think about it similarly. I get that from your discussion of responsibility and context here.)

Cheers.