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From: weide@elephant.cis.ohio-state.edu (Bruce Weide)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Reusability considered harmful??(!!)
Keywords: Reusability, Division of Labor
Message-ID: <87829@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Date: 30 Jan 91 18:32:18 GMT
References: <6108@stpstn.UUCP>
Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu
Reply-To: Bruce Weide <weide@cis.ohio-state.edu>
Organization: Ohio State University Computer and Information Science
Lines: 21

Brad, in suggesting a replacement for the word "reusable" as
applied to software components, you suggest that some opponents of the
idea might argue:

>"Reusability! Why 'reuse' software, when any fool knows it is cheaper
>to throw used bits away and copy more from a master as needed."

Seriously, now, have you really faced this sort of response to your
ideas?  I knew we were having some trouble communicating with certain
communities, but it never occurred to me that the problems might run
so deep :-).

By the way, I applaud your recent emphasis (in a couple postings) on
specification of external behavior, as an alternative to source code,
as a way of explaining/understanding component behavior.  Maybe we
could resurrect the discussion here (mostly flames) of a couple years
ago when we suggested that software components should be sold as
specification + object code, and that source code should remain
hidden.  Talk about a hard sell...

	-Bruce