The Myth of Software Reuse

by Dave Rooney

I've been developing software professionally since 1988, long enough to have encountered multiple fads and movements within the software industry. A goal that has endured from my first few months as a developer to the present day: software should be reusable. Object orientation promised it. Component-based software promised it. Now, Web services and service-oriented architecture (SOA) promise that holy grail of substantially reduced costs through the reuse of code.