Understanding the DRY Principle: Don't Repeat Yourself

Understanding the DRY Principle: Don't Repeat Yourself In the world of software development, simplicity and efficiency are key to building scalable, maintainable, and bug-free applications. One principle that has stood the test of time in promoting these values is the DRY principle — Don’t Repeat Yourself. In this post, we’ll explore what DRY means, why it’s important, how to implement it, and where it’s sometimes okay to bend the rule. What is the DRY Principle? The DRY principle was first introduced by Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas in their book The Pragmatic Programmer. It states: "Every piece of knowledge must have a single, unambiguous, authoritative representation within a system." In simpler terms, don’t write the same code, logic, or data structure more than once. If you find yourself copying and pasting code or logic, it’s time to refactor. Repetition is a Code Smell Repetitive code might seem harmless at first, but it comes with hidden costs: -Harder maintenance: Changing logic in one place means you have to hunt it down in other places. - Increased bugs: Forget to update a duplicated block? Boom — inconsistent behavior. - Bloated codebase: Repeated logic increases file size and reduces readability.