The author of this piece was not engaging in a DRY activity even if he thought he was. He (perhaps unwittingly) admits to it himself:
> My code traded the ability to change requirements for reduced duplication, and it was not a good trade.
The acronym DRY was coined in The Pragmatic Programmer, and the author of that book makes it clear that DRY is about not repeating requirements in code. You definitely don't want to deduplicate similar code if it involves multiple requirements because then you entangle yourself, which is what the author of this piece did.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22022599
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22022842
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22022896
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22022836
The author of this piece was not engaging in a DRY activity even if he thought he was. He (perhaps unwittingly) admits to it himself:
> My code traded the ability to change requirements for reduced duplication, and it was not a good trade.
The acronym DRY was coined in The Pragmatic Programmer, and the author of that book makes it clear that DRY is about not repeating requirements in code. You definitely don't want to deduplicate similar code if it involves multiple requirements because then you entangle yourself, which is what the author of this piece did.