Boilerplate code

In computer programming, boilerplate code, or simply boilerplate, are sections of code that are repeated in multiple places with little to no variation. When using languages that are considered verbose, the programmer must write a lot of boilerplate code to accomplish only minor functionality. The need for boilerplate can be reduced through high-level mechanisms such as metaprogramming (which has the computer automatically write the needed boilerplate code or insert it at compile time), convention over configuration (which provides good default values, reducing the need to specify program details in every project) and model-driven engineering (which uses models and model-to-code generators, eliminating the need for manual boilerplate code). It is also possible to move boilerplate code to an abstract class so that it can be inherited by any number of concrete classes. Another option would be to move it into a subroutine so that it can be called instead of being duplicated.

In computer programming, boilerplate code, or simply boilerplate, are sections of code that are repeated in multiple places with little to no variation. When using languages that are considered verbose, the programmer must write a lot of boilerplate code to accomplish only minor functionality. The need for boilerplate can be reduced through high-level mechanisms such as metaprogramming (which has the computer automatically write the needed boilerplate code or insert it at compile time), convention over configuration (which provides good default values, reducing the need to specify program details in every project) and model-driven engineering (which uses models and model-to-code generators, eliminating the need for manual boilerplate code). It is also possible to move boilerplate code to an abstract class so that it can be inherited by any number of concrete classes. Another option would be to move it into a subroutine so that it can be called instead of being duplicated. !/usr/bin/env perl use warnings; use strict; The first line is a shebang, which identifies the file as a Perl script that can be executed directly on the command line on Unix/Linux systems. The other two are pragmas turning on warnings and strict mode, which are mandated by fashionable Perl programming style. This next example is a C/C++ programming language boilerplate, #include guard. ifndef MYINTERFACE_H define MYINTERFACE_H ... endif This checks, and sets up, a global flag to tell the compiler whether the file myinterface.h has already been included. As many interdepending files may be involved in the compilation of a module, this avoids processing the same header multiple times, (which would lead to errors due to multiple definitions with the same name). public class Pet { private String name; private Person owner; public Pet(String name, Person owner) { this.name = name; this.owner = owner; } public String getName() { return name; } public void setName(String name) { this.name = name; } public Person getOwner() { return owner; } public void setOwner(Person owner) { this.owner = owner; } } Most of the boilerplate in this example exists to fulfill requirements of JavaBeans. If the variables name and owner were declared as public, the accessor and mutator methods would not be needed. In Java 14, record classes were added to fight with this issue. To reduce the amount of boilerplate, many frameworks have been developed, e.g. Lombok for Java. The same code as above is auto-generated by Lombok using Java annotations, which is a form of metaprogramming: @AllArgsConstructor @Getter @Setter public class Pet { private String name; private Person owner; } case class Pet(var name: String, var owner: Person) ifndef MYINTERFACE_H define MYINTERFACE_H ... endif public class Pet { public string Name { get; set; } public Person Owner { get; set; } } Starting with C# 9.0 there is an opportunity to use Records which generate classes with Properties automatically: public record Pet(string Name, Person Owner); Test The WHATWG HTML Living Standard defines that the , and tags may be safely omitted under most circumstances. The tag is technically redundant when coming directly from a web server configured to send the character encoding in an HTTP header, though it becomes useful when the HTML response is saved in an .html file, cache, or web archive. Google's HTML/CSS style guide recommends that all optional tags be omitted, resulting in much less boilerplate. The World Wide Web Consortium states that the element must not be empty: Test ==See also== ==References==

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