Imagine.
Your computer refuses to copy-paste any more.
As far as I am concerned- I think i would become dysfunctional.I would rather pack up and go home.Then bother to write all the lines of code- that I pretend I do.
I think its one of the most brilliant ever add-on made to software development.
Well – I know it has reaches beyond software development as well- copying files and so forth
Write Once.Copy everywhere else.
But for programmers- it was God-send.
Copy-paste gave reuse an entirely new meaning.No longer re-use meant that you actually reuse pre-written programs - you can still reuse it without actually re-using it.
Find the method you need from somewhere- few yanks here and there. Presto. You are good to go.
Web Tutorials
Can you imagine a tutorial on say writing your first Hibernate program- asking you.”can you please type in the following 50 lines of code from this section to your file”.
(I know you could have downloaded the tutorial- but I guess you get my point…)
In Time Presentations
You have that presentation to make . Now you are a seasoned player used to lights and action.
But you are not going to write the presentation from scratch.Are you?Seriously.
Find the one that you made last week. This is a different project – but since we copied the code form that project- most of the things are the same.Same risks.Same design.Same people.
So why not simply copy the presentation as well and make the little changes you need to make to make your life not a repetition it is.
Problems:
Well like everything else- it comes with its own baggage of problems.
1)A new classification of errors were born- which we fondly call “Copy Paste Errors”. These errors are that are solely attributed to the fact that the programmer did a Copy-Paste rather than actualy code it
e.g. you need a method more or less same as one already written by you or someone else- elsewhere
So you copy the code and paste it in your program and get free credit of adding another 100 line of code to your experience
The uh-oh arises when you had to change soemthing after you copied- but forgot to do so.This is a typical ‘Copy-Paste-Error’
2) Cut instead of Copy
A wrong choice between Cut and Copy can cost you dearly.
Cut can prove fatal. specially on file systems- when you have no chance of recovering from the trash-can.
Some editors provide multiple clipboards or un-do facility.
That helps to asome extent and depending upon the editor you are using- it may be a great extent
The funny side
I remember once a friend who is\was a passionate developer- trying to fix a problem on a coleagues desktop. He recognized what the problem was and all he had to do was- copy few lines of code from his desktop to his .He remembered having done a ctrl-c on that piece few mintes ago – but the ctrl-v was not working…Hmmm i wonder why…
History
Copy-Paste was first introduced by Lawrence G Tesler
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