On: Low Hanging Fruit of Programming Language Design

[z3t4]

> In other words, 70% of the code on GitHub consists of clones of previously created files

I interpret this as code reuse which is almost the opposite of duplication.

[dllthomas → z3t4]

Duplication will always be reuse - why are you duplicating if not to use?

Reuse is not always duplication, however, and reuse without duplication is quite often better.

[z3t4 → dllthomas]

Repetition (like in DRY) is duplication without reuse. When I think of duplication in the negative sense, I think of repetition, not reusing a module or library. Another negative thing with duplication is taking up more disk space, but a good file system will take care of that! Then there is "DLL hell", or "library hell" where two programs use the same library, but different versions ... How do you reuse without duplication ?