Path: utzoo!dciem!nrcaer!sce!ulysses!garym From: garym@ulysses.UUCP (Gary Murphy) Newsgroups: comp.sw.components Subject: Re: Reasons for low reuse Message-ID: <7045@ulysses.UUCP> Date: 12 Sep 89 14:31:39 GMT References: <60116@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> Reply-To: garym@cognos.UUCP (Gary Murphy) Organization: Cognos Inc., Ottawa, Canada Lines: 29 In article <60116@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> Golden Richard writes: >Another (perhaps secondary) reason that I see for the current "low reuse" >syndrome is the number of extremely sloppy components that are available. >...[an example of buying object code] ... A major problem with using someone >else's code in object form is that, barring a rigorous specification, it's >virtually impossible to ascertain *exactly* what a component does. Having >source is helpful, but who wants to poke through hundreds (thousands?) of >pages of code "verifying" functionality? I've had similar experiences with C library functions packaged with a compiler, with 3rd party code that uses 'slightly' variant library functions, and some OOP systems where the interface is formally spelled out but the rest kept elsewhere - in all three cases, I've either needed to hunt down the real source or waste a great deal of time probing a black box. In this day and age, few programmers would even poke through the lines they wrote themselves without a symbolic debugger and if source is included, all it takes is a single re-compile to create the step-able version. And speaking of reuse, and this problem of source-code secrets, how does this sit with the misplaced metaphor of software-as-literature with respect to copyrights? (If I quote Tolstoy's first edition, and the passage is stated contrarily in the fifth, do I still owe royalties? :-). -- Gary Murphy - Cognos Incorporated - (613) 738-1338 x5537 3755 Riverside Dr - P.O. Box 9707 - Ottawa Ont - CANADA K1G 3N3 e-mail: decvax!utzoo!dciem!nrcaer!cognos!garym Cosmic Irreversibility: 1 pot T -> 1 pot P, 1 pot P /-> 1 pot T