Software reuse

Every year, companies write millions of lines of code. A lot of times the code written to perform a certain desired functionality has already been written and published by someone else. However, the world of published programming code is massive and still relatively unorganized. Therefore, programmers haven't the time to find and debug existing software which requires them to start from scratch. This method along with wasting countless man hours, can be prone to error, which in turn raises costs the software development industry.

Software reuse is the pracitice of utilizing code that others have written to use as a building block for other programs. The Linux operating system is a prime example of the massive sharing and reusing of independently developed modules to build off of the basic Linux Kernel. The Microsoft Windows operating system also has a need to develop code to be reused by outside programmers, some very broad examples are .NET and DirectX.

Although large companies are able to promote massive frameworks and libraries for other developers to build on, the greatest challenge for large companies is finding a way to optimize the reuse of small sections of code within the organization. The benefits of sharing and communicating pre-developed code are very desireable to software development studios both large and small.

"Moreover, the skills required to develop, deploy, and support reusable software have traditionally been a 'black art,' locked in the heads of expert developers." ([1])