I have to admit: I am terrified of WET code. I do stop short of introducing abstraction monstrosities, but I usually do create what others would call unnecessary abstractions, to stay DRY.
Why? Because I tend to write all my code such that a complete stranger should be able to drop in and understand it. I constantly imagine that stranger looking over my shoulder while coding. I imagine the code should be maintainable and speak for itself without me there at all (I do write comments).
So, such a person SHOULD be able to change some value or logic somewhere, and rely on not having to do that anywhere else. That is the magic of local reasoning, as brought about by structured programming, after eradicating goto statements. WET code erodes that. I find it a very important principle though and value it highly.
An example where this falls apart is config files. For example, a port number might be repeated in different places. Comments are indispensable then, but they rot. So if possible, I encode it using actual language constructs.
In summary, I do err on the side of DRY rather aggressively, but don’t follow it all of the time.
Why? Because I tend to write all my code such that a complete stranger should be able to drop in and understand it. I constantly imagine that stranger looking over my shoulder while coding. I imagine the code should be maintainable and speak for itself without me there at all (I do write comments).
So, such a person SHOULD be able to change some value or logic somewhere, and rely on not having to do that anywhere else. That is the magic of local reasoning, as brought about by structured programming, after eradicating goto statements. WET code erodes that. I find it a very important principle though and value it highly.
An example where this falls apart is config files. For example, a port number might be repeated in different places. Comments are indispensable then, but they rot. So if possible, I encode it using actual language constructs.
In summary, I do err on the side of DRY rather aggressively, but don’t follow it all of the time.