No More Coding From Scratch?

Susan Elliott Sim asks: "In the science fiction novel, 'A Deepness in the Sky,' Vernor Vinge described a future where software is created by 'programmer archaeologists' who search archives for existing pieces of code, contextualize them, and combine them into new applications. So much complexity and automation has been built into code that it is simply infeasible to build from scratch. While this seems like the ultimate code reuse fantasy (or nightmare), we think it's starting to happen with the availability of Open Source software. We have observed a number of projects where software development is driven by the identification, selection, and combination of working software systems. More often than not, these constituent parts are Open Source software systems and typically not designed to be used as components. These parts are then made to interoperate through wrappers and glue code. We think this trend is a harbinger of things to come. What do you think? How prevalent is this approach to new software development? What do software developers think about their projects being used in such a way?"

Good Idea

[fatman22]

Code recycling, and that word was chosen specifically for this case, is a time-honored and proven concept. One just has to look at Microsoft's products to see that.

Re:That'll be the day

[B3ryllium]

It's called "Pop Music". Or, more specifically, "Nickelback". :)

Re:High(er) level languages anyone?

[ResidntGeek]

In 20 years time nobody will be pissing around with C code or Java or or Lisp ( ok maybe lisp) except for historical/maintaince reasons.

That's right. Why, just think of 20 years ago. Today we program in C and C++, and beginners use BASIC. Not at all like people did it 20 years ago.