Re: Reserve Demobilization System Built Around Reused Ada Code

[jls@netcom.COM (Jim Showalter)]

>I don't disagree one bit. What I hate to see is another contractor horn-blowing
>what was ultimately a rehashing of existing code. It was certainly NOT a
>properly engineered system that drew on an established repository of reusable
>code. It is misleading to the customer and the industry at large to portray
>such development efforts as true reuse. I am NOT demeaning the achievement.
>Let's just call a spade a spade. Maybe "rapid tailoring" or "rapid reengineering"
>is a more suitable term for this type of approach.

Chuck, why do I get the idea that we basically agree on a fundamental set
of core principles, but keep getting wound around the axle because of
semantics? You say tomayto, I say tomahto... (I'm not flaming--it is
just an observation I've made.)

Perhaps in this case the disagreement is simply due to my belief that the use
of code more than once constitutes reuse BY DEFINITION, in contrast with some
other notion you (I THINK) refer to as "true reuse". I guess the problem
I have is I don't know what true reuse is, or how it differs from reusing
(as opposed to rewriting from scratch) 800KSLOC of code on the project
described at the beginning of this thread.

I'm reminded, in fact, of a paper a friend of mine gave on reuse (he got
his PhD in the subject) in which his opening words were "I'm not sure
what reuse means". He went on to explain that it was a lot like the paradox of
AI: every time someone achieves something in the AI domain, people respond
by saying "Oh, well, THAT'S not AI, that's just <some other term>". And
yet, progress keeps getting MADE in the AI field. Is reuse going to be
a victim of the same phenomenon? My personal view of reuse is that it happens
all the time, it happens in great amounts, and we all think there is a 
terrible problem with achieving reuse because we refuse to recognize it
when it is staring us in the face because we were expecting something
else, something more remarkable and harder to grasp.
-- 
**************** JIM SHOWALTER, jls@netcom.com, (408) 243-0630 ****************
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