# What is DRY? (And Other Things We Say at 3 AM)

> **Source:** [https://lorbic.com/what-is-dry/](https://lorbic.com/what-is-dry/)
> **Author:** [Vikash Patel](https://vikashpatel.net)
> **Published:** June 22, 2026
> **Reading Time:** 2 min
> 
> *This is the raw Markdown source of the article from the [Lorbic Technical Journal](https://lorbic.com/).*

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There is a famous programmer joke that always gets me:

"What is DRY? Well, at the risk of repeating myself..."

It is funny, but it also hurts a little because it is so true. We all know the rule: Don't Repeat Yourself (DRY). We learn it from day one. You write a piece of code once, put it in a clean function, and never type it again.

But let's be honest. It is the middle of the night. You are staring at your screen, your eyes hurt from the light, and you just need the server to stop crashing. What really happens? You copy that block of code from another file. You paste it right where you need it. You change one variable, save the file, and quietly hope nobody looks too closely.

We talk about DRY online, but then we go to work and type the exact same error check fifty times a day just to keep the backend running. We try to be perfect and make everything reusable, but sometimes that just makes the code harder to read. Sometimes, the most practical thing you can do is just let the code repeat.

Building a perfectly clean system is a nice idea. But servers have real limits, and honestly, our brains do too when we are just trying to finish the job so we can finally sleep.

Sometimes you just have to accept the copy-paste.

Anyway, I will end this here... at the risk of repeating myself.