Copy-Paste

I can't think of many features that are both absolutely necessary and the biggest threat to the world as we know it (well, almost) at the same time as the ability to copy and paste text at the blink of a Ctrl+C\V.

Retyping (or rewriting) a text over and over again is something computers excel at, but we humans can't stand, I guess that's the origin of punishments where you have to write a sentence one hundred times or copy sections from a book.

But when I think about it, if you work with computers and you're using copy-paste too frequently you're probably doing something wrong, a few examples:

1. The most trivial example: if you're coding and you've just pasted a code snippet you copied from somewhere else in your code you probably should write a method that implements this code snippet. Even if you've copied someone else's code (from the internet for example) I think that you'll have a better understanding of what the code does by retyping it and there's less chance you'll miss any adjustments you should do.

2. In my line of business I'm often tempted to copy contents of configuration files and the like but as with code, there's a good chance I'll miss some necessary environment adjustments.

3. The last example is "written in blood": you might think you see the text you're going to paste but YOU ARE WRONG. I don't know if hidden characters are to blame or some other clipboard wonder, but I keep encountering commands that malfunction when pasted: I have some OID configuration commands that do this, I encountered it when trying to install Oracle SOA Suite and just today I had a Java command copied straight from Oracle's documentation (as part of installing a connectivity web service between Microsoft's SCOM and Oracle's Grid Control) that just laughed at me until I manually retyped it.

So me, I usually retype EVERYTHING, this way I'm feeling more in control of what I'm doing.