Pragmatic Software Reuse: A View from the Trenches

Abstract

Software reuse has been a part of the software engineering field since its inception. Research on reuse has focused almost exclusively on pre-planned approaches. Relatively little has been written about reuse performed in the absence of its pre-planning: pragmatic reuse. While many academics have dismissed nonpre- planned reuse as ill-advised, very little evidence exists about it, especially with respect to industrial practice. We conducted a survey of 59 industrial software developers to capture the perception, frequency, motivations, difficulties, and execution of the practice of pragmatic reuse within their development activities. We found that the majority of developers surveyed perceive that: pragmatic reuse has an important place in their repertoire of techniques; pragmatic reuse tasks are a frequent part of their development activities; and that they face a variety of practical difficulties while performing pragmatic reuse tasks. Opinions vary on the range and scale of situations where pragmatic reuse is suitable.