A coworker had never heard of this, and I couldn't provide a real definition. For me, it's always been an instance of 'I-know-it-when-I-see-it'.
Bonus question, who originated the term?
+4
A:
"boilerplate code" is any seemingly repetitive code that shows up again and again in order to get some result that seems like it ought to be much simpler.
It's a subjective definition.
The term comes from "boilerplate" in the newspaper industry: wiki
Adam Vandenberg
2010-10-21 21:40:22
The idea behind multiproperties in OOP is to reduce boilerplate, so when applied properly it can be reduced quite a bit.
Andrew Sledge
2010-10-22 13:36:58
+2
A:
It's code that can be used by many applications/contexts with little or no change.
Boilerplate is derived from the steel industry in the early 1900s.
gmcalab
2010-10-21 21:41:24
A:
From wikipedia:
In computer programming, boilerplate is the term used to describe sections of code that have to be included in many places with little or no alteration. It is more often used when referring to languages which are considered verbose, i.e. the programmer must write a lot of code to do minimal jobs.
so basically you can consider boilerplate code all the text that is needed by a programming language very ofter all around the programs you write in that language.
Modern languages are trying to reduce it, but also older language which have specific type-checkers (for example OCaml has a type-inferrer that allows you to avoid so many delcarations that would be boilerplate code in a more verbose language like Java)
Jack
2010-10-21 21:42:27
+1
A:
Joshua Bloch has a talk about API design that covers how bad ones make boilerplate code necessary. (Minute 46 for reference to boilerplate, listening to this today)
dove
2010-10-22 11:39:20
+1
A:
On the etymology the term boilerplate: from http://www.takeourword.com/Issue009.html...
Interestingly, the term (boilerplate) arose from the newspaper business.
Columns and other pieces that were syndicated were sent out to
subscribing newspapers in the form of a mat (i.e. a matrix).
Once received, boiling lead was poured into this mat to create
the plate used to print the piece, hence the name boilerplate.
As the article printed on a boilerplate could not be altered,
the term came to be used by attorneys to refer to the portions
of a contract which did not change through repeated uses in
different applications, and finally to language in general which
did not change in any document that was used repeatedly for
different occasions.
What constitutes boilerplate in programming? As may others have pointed out, it is just a chunk of code that is copied over and over again with little or no changes made to it in the process.
NealB
2010-10-22 13:51:16