Reuse News Brief - 96-07-26.txt [1/1]

Reuse News Brief - 96-07-26.txt [1/1]

[ReuseIC]

Reuse News Brief
Week Ending: July 26, 1996

**********************************************************************
STRIVING TO MAKE CORPORATIONS MORE EFFICIENT BY REUSING CODE
**********************************************************************
The June 3, 1996 issue of Information Week features an 
article by Rich Levin titled, "Don't send code down a black 
hole." The article notes that the implementation of a reuse 
methodology will make IS engineers more efficient. Also, 
simple, fundamental changes in the way application 
development is managed, combined with careful selection of 
tools and programmer training, can significantly increase 
the amount and quality of reusable code.

"A solid reuse methodology cuts across language and 
operating systems, providing benefits to developers at all 
levels, from legacy Cobol programmers to users of component-
based languages such as Visual Basic," states Levin. Code 
reuse begins at the analysis phase, according to experts, 
and demands a formal methodology that defines how module's 
are developed. 

"While you need tools and a methodology to implement reuse, 
success boils down to the people involved and their 
commitment to the project," Levin states. "Reuse should be 
the responsibility of team leaders and IT management. The 
management teams need to author, formalize, and document 
reuse methods and organizations need to recognize that 
adopting a culture of reuse is not without cost."

SOURCE:
Levin, Rich. "Don't Send Code Down a Black Hole," 
	Information Week. June 3, 1996: 9A.

******************************
THE COMPONENTS OF CHANGE
******************************
According to an article in Information Week by Jacques 
Surveyer, IS departments at corporations are already 
beginning to adopt a strategy for application development 
that involves reusing software components instead of 
creating programs from scratch. The benefits of this 
approach include faster development of custom applications 
and a reduction in coding requirements.

A component refers to an reusable part of a program; the 
most obvious type of components are objects. Components can 
be grouped into two major categories: fine-grain components, 
which include subroutine libraries, objects and class 
frameworks, and smart objects. At the other end are broad-
base components, such as template generators and universal 
clients.

Surveyer discusses component classification in detail and 
also reiterates the benefits of components.

SOURCE:
Surveyer, Jacques. "The Components of Change: Companies Turn 
	to Pre-written Software Rather Than Code From Scratch," 
	Information Week. May 6, 1996: 1A.
 
**********************************************************
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Reuse News Brief - 96-07-26.txt [1/1]

[Jeff Veit]

reuseic@sw-eng.falls-church.va.us (ReuseIC) wrote:

>Reuse News Brief
>Week Ending: July 26, 1996

>**********************************************************************
>STRIVING TO MAKE CORPORATIONS MORE EFFICIENT BY REUSING CODE
>**********************************************************************
>The June 3, 1996 issue of Information Week features an 
>article by Rich Levin titled, "Don't send code down a black 
>hole." The article notes that the implementation of a reuse 
>methodology will make IS engineers more efficient. Also, 
>simple, fundamental changes in the way application 
>development is managed, combined with careful selection of 
>tools and programmer training, can significantly increase 
>the amount and quality of reusable code.

<snip>

Cool idea.  And I reuse an awful lot of code.  But remember that
Ariane reused code.  Moral: Document the limits of the component ?




| Jeff Veit    EMail jeff@earth3.demon.co.uk    .^,                     |
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Re: Reuse News Brief - 96-07-26.txt [1/1]

[Robert Dewar]

Jeff said

"Cool idea.  And I reuse an awful lot of code.  But remember that
Ariane reused code.  Moral: Document the limits of the component ?"

The other thing is that you have to be careful to make sure that you
have properly parametrized the new use. It is easy sometimes to slip up
on this, and then code reuse can have the same hazards as cut and paste
in an editor -- very useful, we could not do with out this feature in
an editor, but we have all made cut-and-paste errors.

One lesson here is that in building reusable components, it is worth
giving some thought to the interface in terms of making it harder to
make this kind of error. Perhaps someone can come up with a nice example,
here is a trivial one:

  Print_Msg (S : String; N : Natural);
  --  Prints first N characters of string S.

  Print_Msg (S : String);
  --  Prints string S

The second interface is clearly better, since the first has the risk
of copying a call, and replacing the string without adjusting the
count.