Copy-Paste as a Principled Engineering Tool

Authors: Michael W. Godfrey Cory J. Kapser

Venue: Making Software: What Really Works and Why We Believe It, 2010

Year: 2010

Abstract: 〈Ctrl-C〉 〈Ctrl-V〉 Every software developer knows that copy-paste—aka code cloning—is a bad habit, yet we all do it. We might wince, knowing that we’re being a little lazy, but we usually manage to convince ourselves that the programmatic ends justify the means. After all, a lot of the time it’s simply quicker to copy and paste a piece of existing code that does something similar to what we want, and then carefully clean things up afterwards.

BibTeX:

@inproceedings{michaelw.godfrey2010caapet,
    author = "Michael W. Godfrey and Cory J. Kapser",
    title = "Copy-Paste as a Principled Engineering Tool",
    year = "2010",
    booktitle = "Making Software: What Really Works and Why We Believe It"
}

Plain Text:

Michael W. Godfrey and Cory J. Kapser, "Copy-Paste as a Principled Engineering Tool," Making Software: What Really Works and Why We Believe It