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I’ve been out of the programming Biz for awhile now. And hopefully things have really changed for the better. I just don’t know that it has from personal experience.
And now with that being said, I found that the concept of re-usable code was a great concept. But in practice led to Bloatware. That is software that had so many Re-used modules that had unused portions in them that were unnecessary for the project at hand.
And quite frankly in the software projects that I worked on it turned out that the most efficient use of code and equipment usually came down to a single individual writing and then handing it over for testing to another individual or small group that was known for breaking code and finding bugs or faults.
The end result was code that is still in use 20+ years after being written.
And once again I am no longer in the programming Biz. So if things have improved to the point that re-usable upper level code is feasible. Then go for it.
Also as a side note. My brain got worn out while trying to remember nuances and syntax in the various programming Languages, I learned, Assembler, BASIC, RPG, COBOL, Fortran IV and 77, C, C++ They sometimes became a jumble in those late morning coding sessions. And after all that I found that it was too much and just concentrated on one.
Today I just do some farming and I am happier than I have been in Decades. There is something to be said for downsizing to a simpler lifestyle.
The only method I’ve ever seen work to get people reusing code is full group code reviews. You can talk a lot about best practices and libraries and everything else, but the punchline is that unless people know there’s something in house that’s already solved Problem X they aren’t going to go looking for that code to use, they’re going to write their own. The most common sentence I’ve heard uttered in full group code reviews is “I didn’t know we had that”. Of course the problem with full group reviews is you have to stop all development for a week or two and lock everybody in long very boring meetings. It’s usually worth it in the long run, but it’s a hard sell.
Bump for later
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Designs are easy to reuse. Implementations, not so much.
Easy to preach reusable software. It’s like writing an article in favor of motherhood and apple pie. People have been writing software now for at least half a century - maybe a bit more. Some software gets reused - other times the same wheel gets reinvented over and over again. My prediction is that 50 years from now you could write the same article, bemoaning the same failures and proposing the same solutions. Call me a cynic - that’s fine.
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Real programmers work at assembly level. Most kids don’t even know what a register is these days.
I spent a decade administering a version control database depot for an IT dept of a billion $ software company. Despite numerous efforts by lower level staffers including myself, no code reuse project ever got off the ground. Redundant code is being written to this day, while the company upper management whines about the costs of the IT department, forces layoffs and exports jobs to Bangalore. Why?
Rush, artificial deadlines that are never met anyway, emphasis on projects that benefit directly and immediately customers outside of IT, the yes-man corporate culture. For the same reasons the code is written undocumented using unstandardized variable names. I tried to promote code reviews? Are you kidding?
At the same time, believe it or not, the engineering department which produces the company’s products adheres to strict standards of coding, code reviewing, release management. Go figure.
Stay well ................. FRegards
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