For a field that often prides itself on its “code being poetry” or for designing beautiful architectures, there is definitely an level of copying and pasting that happens in “the real world.”
And yes, there’s a difference between using existing modules and systems as components of an application and flat out coping existing pieces of code and placing it throughout an application. Perhaps the biggest problem with the latter is that it generates a number of unintended side effects.
I can’t say I’ve seen this terribly often, but when I have it always makes me a cringe a little. Know what I mean?
Ben Miller says
Yeah, I’ve done that. It’s so easy… until you find the bug in the code you just pasted in 15 different places.
Tom says
That’s like bad code karma or something ;).
d3ft punk says
Sadly, it took me two readings to get the joke.
Even worse, this was what my Visual Basic 6 class was like in 2001.
Tom says
I dunno if it’s funnier that you misread the joke or that you’re talking about VB6.
Kidding!. I did some VB6 stuff years back, too. :shutters: