Eric: Created page with "''Copy and Paste Redeemed'' by Christoph Reichenbach Software development and, especially, generative programming leverage abstractions as a means for re-using information. How..."

2015-09-07T15:11:06Z

Created page with "''Copy and Paste Redeemed'' by Christoph Reichenbach Software development and, especially, generative programming leverage abstractions as a means for re-using information. How..."

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''Copy and Paste Redeemed'' by Christoph Reichenbach

Software development and, especially, generative programming leverage
abstractions as a means for re-using information. However, such
abstractions can be challenging to develop and maintain. An
alternative is to re-use existing source code by copy-paste-modify, a
methodology in which source code is explicitly duplicated and one of
the duplicates adapted for a new but similar purpose.

We have conducted a user study that suggest that software engineers
find copy-paste-modify to be faster than manual abstraction for common
re-use tasks. We therefore propose that software engineers should
forego hand-written abstractions in favour of copying and pasting. To
address the potential maintenance and comprehension challenges caused
by massive code duplication, we propose a software tool that `folds
together' similar pieces of code and automatically creates suitable
abstrations. This allows software developers to get the best of both
worlds: custom abstraction, together with easy re-use.

We have evaluated the tool with a number of abstraction tasks taken
from popular Open Source projects and found it to be effective;
moreover, project maintainers are generally willing to incorporate
abstractions introduced by our tool into their revision control
repositories.

WG211/M15Reichenbach - Revision history

Eric: Created page with "''Copy and Paste Redeemed'' by Christoph Reichenbach Software development and, especially, generative programming leverage abstractions as a means for re-using information. How..."