Programming

WET is not what you think it is, or at least not originally. It's not some alternative to DRY. It didn't stand for Write Everything Twice. It stands for Write Every Time. It's supposed to be a negative way to describe code that isn't DRY. It's also abbreviated as "Waste Everyone's Time".

Much, much, much later somebody tried to reuse the term for "Write Everything Twice" but talking specifically about the benefits of singular, repeated templating because the abstraction needed to refactor code into "Write-Once" can make things harder to understand. In other words, it creates a chain of pre-required knowledge of how the abstraction works well before you can even work with it.

The irony here is that DRY is not really about code duplication. It's actually about system knowledge (structures and processes) being clear and unambiguous. Or, applied, you, as a person, not having to repeat yourself when it comes to sharing knowledge. It lends to simpler constructs that don't need much explanation. The example given of Write Everything Twice is actually being DRY, but they don't realize it.

Bill Venners: What's the DRY principle?

Dave Thomas: Don't Repeat Yourself (or DRY) is probably one of the most misunderstood parts of the book.

Bill Venners: How is DRY misunderstood and what is the correct way to understand it?

Dave Thomas: Most people take DRY to mean you shouldn't duplicate code. That's not its intention. The idea behind DRY is far grander than that.

DRY says that every piece of system knowledge should have one authoritative, unambiguous representation. Every piece of knowledge in the development of something should have a single representation. A system's knowledge is far broader than just its code. It refers to database schemas, test plans, the build system, even documentation.

https://www.artima.com/articles/orthogonality-and-the-dry-principle

The article/interview explains more about how DRY is meant to work and even talks about the pitfalls of code generators, which the WET article complains about (React).

The misunderstanding since DRY's coining is probably because, like natural language, we change meanings we with our environment. DRY became a term people use to blast too much abstraction. But noisy abstractions are not DRY. In response we have a new term card AHA (Avoid Hasty Abstractions), which exists as a counter to what people think DRY is.

The TL;DR is DRY is meant to mean your code should be unambiguous, not some sort of mantra to deduplify your code. Apply its original principles, and follow AHA which should be a clearer safeguard to avoid your abstractions not following DRY.