Repeat yourself, do more than one thing, and rewrite everything If you ask a programmer for advice—a terrible idea—they might tell you something like the following: Don’t repeat yourself. Programs.
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Yesterday, while running a session at work on Rust, I offhandedly remarked ‘I think we can all agree that when writing unit tests, private methods shouldn’t be directly tested except in some special situations’ and to my suprise, I had thought wrong. A mini-debate erupted where various people argued mutually incompatible viewpoints. We quickly moved on from the debate but I was left a little embarrassed that I had misjudged the developer zeitgeist.
I recently read an article by Jason Swett where he argues against Sandi Metz’ old chestnut “duplication is better than the wrong abstraction” and it made me feel like I have to articulate why I’m Team Sandi here. I’m sure I’ve used the saying a million times in discussions with colleagues and, as such, I feel personally attacked by Jason’s article and need to defend my honor.