Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!uxc!uxc.cso.uiuc.edu!m.cs.uiuc.edu!p.cs.uiuc.edu!johnson
From: johnson@p.cs.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: C++ LIBRARY/TOOL SURVEY
Message-ID: <77300021@p.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 8 Mar 89 18:26:00 GMT
References: <90941@<1989Feb27>
Lines: 15
Nf-ID: #R:<1989Feb27:90941:p.cs.uiuc.edu:77300021:000:687
Nf-From: p.cs.uiuc.edu!johnson    Mar  8 12:26:00 1989


Code that hasn't been reused is probably not very good yet.  Thus,
the code that you write is always "not good enough to share".
Sharing makes it good, because people generalize and rewrite
to make the code clearer.

Of course, people can just add to a library instead of rewriting
it, and entropy eventually takes over.  However, libraries provide
experimental evidence necessary to develop generalized designs, so
sharing code and letting others reuse it is a good way to come up
with reusable software.

The best documentation that I have seen was written by someone
trying to understand the code.  Once you figure out the code,
you document those things that were hard to understand.