Comments on: AntiPaste, because Pasting Code Is Harmful

By: Tony Rasa

Tony Rasa — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 14:12:55 +0000

@Paul reading that terse comment, its way more harsh than i intended. oops. so here’s a free smiley

By: Tony Rasa

Tony Rasa — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 14:02:21 +0000

@Paul It’s a joke. Lighten up.

By: Paul Evans

Paul Evans — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 06:33:11 +0000

Anything that slows down the coder is bad. Work in progress often means moving code around. Refactoring sometimes means moving responsibilities (and related fields and functions) around different files. Personally I would find it insulting to have to write on what amounts to lines on a virtual blackboard.

Peer reviews on check-in, occasional code reviews… that’s where to educate a developer by means of human communication about copying and pasting code. A mechanism like this is just asking to be gamed. If forced on someone it is the equivalent of a recurring nasty sarcastic note on your screen versus an honest constructive chat.

I understand why you might want an automated nanny like that but if there must be something like this it should be a quality gate before check-in (like fxcop / stylecop) *not* something that criticizes the work as it is being written.

By: Tony Rasa

Tony Rasa — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 15:25:35 +0000

@Daniel Heh an excellent idea for version 2

By: Daniel Earwicker

Daniel Earwicker — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 11:18:18 +0000

This looks great, but as a colleague of mine has just pointed out, another thing to watch out for is when a developer makes a copy of the source directory for an entire DLL or EXE, renames it, and then adds it back into the solution. They then starts hacking away at it, almost as if a wizard just generated it for them.

Maybe some kind of fuzzy comparison between projects would help here, to spot when they first add the new copy back into the solution.

The dialog could say: “It looks like you’re trying to vandalize everything we hold dear.”

By: Robert Höglund

Robert Höglund — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 18:31:03 +0000

This is brilliant!

By: C# test.net » Oh SNAP, someone actually wrote it…

C# test.net » Oh SNAP, someone actually wrote it… — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 18:21:28 +0000

[...] I’m just laughing my @$$ off at this one: AntiPaste, because Pasting Code Is Harmful [...]

By: Roger

Roger — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 18:13:39 +0000

LMAO, I was just thinking about this on the drive into work today…

By: Tony Rasa

Tony Rasa — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 16:42:37 +0000

@micsaund: don’t worry the production version will have that loophole removed

By: micsaund

micsaund — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 16:37:28 +0000

As long as I can cut and paste that horribly long string into the dialog, it’s OK.