4. version-controlled snippets so you can know if there are improvements / errors
I would never paste in a snippet of code from a bad programmer because the code would look ugly and wrong and it would be obvious.
So the risk is bad programmers copy/pasting from other bad programmers. Sounds like an argument against bad programmers, not copy/paste.
Not everything should be abstracted into a library. I think the example in their screencast is a good one.
Yes, if the snippet has a bug, you're copying that bug everywhere. But if it doesn't, it saves you from writing a potentially buggy implementation.
I believed for many years as a programmer the dogma against copy/paste. Now i use it, as I use any other tool, in a way that I find appropriate.
I totally agree, it's over-sold. But any time you're using something you don't fully understand, you run risks. Being able to be informed of updates / problems would change the entire practice of re-using snippets, and integration into an IDE is the perfect way to do so. You, as a contributor, could even learn of problems / improvements that others have found.
All I'm saying is, in my experience, developing systems and apps for 10 years, the "rare bug" you talk about is just not a big enough problem to warrant that kind of caution.
Because the kind of code that you put in a snippet and reuse is the kind of "glue" or boilerplate code that is a solved problem.
We're also building a feature to allow users to define groups and share snippets with groups.
As much of a hell as it will be to add / maintain, can I also request that they have version + library dependencies listed somewhere, somehow, so you automagically get the most-correct one? I realize I'm asking for a package management system, and I have yet to see one that isn't fugly, but I can dream, can't I? At the very least, I figure language-version is a necessity due to syntax changes.
So you have a very good point, for longevity, that the snippets need to be versioned.