DRY (don´t repeat yourself), is a very popular recommendation found on development best practices. The issue is that without proper bounds, this gets overused and has the potential to create more…

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Explores the idea that code duplication can sometimes be beneficial, challenging the widely accepted DRY principle. Highlights the pitfalls of premature abstraction, semantic overload, and coupling when adhering strictly to DRY. Provides guidelines for when code duplication might be appropriate and how to handle shared components effectively.

Can Code Duplication Be a Good Thing?

Honestly, my view on these weird things is starting to change a bit
I know that in reality, the detriment of our mistakes is only visible as a codebase grows beyond a specific size, so I know I’m not qualified just yet (ThePrimeAgen sets the number at about 10000 lines before regrets really set in)
But, I’m starting to believe that we should think in an “uncomfortableness” order, instead of seeking abstractions with excitement. Like, instead of immediately thinking “this is a repeat”, just code with the copy paste for a while before actually applying DRY
I’d imagine that makes the edge cases and everything painfully clear after you actually support a couple of features with the underlying code

I constantly get into the loop of “Should I copy this, or make a small helper function that only executes that code block” and it drives me crazy sometimes. I have these helper functions scattered across my codebase and have resorted to making files literally called “helper_functions” just to hold them.

The author appears to misunderstand DRY. DRY isn’t about DDD, OOP, or objects specifically—it’s about code. You should think about DRY when writing methods, not when designing classes!!! In practice, DRY often means extracting common logic into reusable helpers or functions, not just creating more objects.
In this case, the author wrote messy code, avoided applying DRY, and then concluded that DRY is a bad pattern. That’s not accurate—the article is weak. DRY works well when used correctly and at the right level of abstraction.
So “Can Code Duplication Be a Good Thing?” - YES. If this is 2 different Things.

Yeah, you realize it’s a tradeoff and to only do it if your intention is to couple the related sections of code together

Thank you for this article. Interesting ideas and relevants points.
I guess it’s a thing you discover when you go further in your career. You happen one day to want so much to do not repeat that you end up not seeing the slight but significant differences between two entities. And when you do, you just revert it all.