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0 pointsmichaelcampbell3y ago0 comments

Thanks; this is about what I was going to say but you said it better.

DRY is a tool, not a design goal. I think part of the Rails issue is a combination of the early Rails hype/philosophy, and the fact that DRY as a concept is so easy to "get", that everyone gets it but often fail the next step of "why". Without the why, you often can't figure out the right when/where so it gets applied everywhere.

It feels to me like another oblique angle of Goodhart's Law; eg: "A rule of thumb that becomes a required practice ceases to be a good rule of thumb".

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harry-wood3y ago

But "early Rails hype/philosophy" is the only thing you've said specifically about Rails. I think I know what you mean though. There are strong philosophies in the Rails (and more generally ruby) communities. Opinionated coding, and software craftsmanship is lauded, more than in other language communities I think.

As a result, rules of thumb like DRY are drummed into new developers. The overall effect of that is probably better code quality in general, but yes probably more instances of them being over-used.

But if Rails has the problem of folks over-using DRY, what are other languages communities doing? Just not doing so well at telling people about DRY in the first place?

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