Okay, that may qualify as too clever

[jducoeur]

There I was, coding along, and realized that this clause -- to unsubscribe from someone's presence when they change their IM handle -- also needs to be over there, for the case where they simply delete their IM handle. I copy the code from place A to B, think about it a minute, slap myself mentally, and decide that I should be extracting a method instead.

So I go to code A, invoke Eclipse's "Extract Method", and *poof*, I have a new method. I go over to B, to replace my copied code with a method call...

... and it's already been done for me.

On the one hand, that's exactly what I wanted. OTOH, it's kind of spooky. It hadn't even occurred to me that Extract Method would go looking for duplicate code and refactor that as well. It's probably usually correct, but managed to hit a button I wasn't even aware of -- the "Waitaminnit, that's *my* code! Don't screw with it!" response was quite visceral...

Comments

[laurion]

Whoa. I think that feels a little like having your second kidney taken out because you went on dialysis for the first one.... except most people intend to go off dialysis.

Maybe it's like taking your shirt off for the shower and finding your pants have come off suddenly too.