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Old 10-02-2010, 02:43 PM   #8
plamzi
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Re: An interesting read

An interesting *topic* but not that great an article. The author goes from one simplistic view (code reuse is always good) to another (code reuse is always bad unless you're surrounded by monkeys).

Color me complicated, but I think it all depends.

I happily put low-level (network & other hardware-talking) libraries to use -- those are generally written by accomplished coders and the fact that they work is enough to give them a passing grade.

On the other hand, I've often had to make a judgment call not to use a free plugin/snippet for my project when I saw it would take me less time to write my own than to decipher what the plugin coder tried to do and the various ways in which it has to be mended or adapted to suit my needs. On several occasions, I've regretted using free code as the process of integration seemed to take longer than doing it afresh.

In time, I suspect that anyone develops a sense of what they should and should not try to reuse depending on the nature of the project, the nature of the code component, and their own level of comfort with this kind of code. It's a bit odd that someone with a long track record as the author of that blog post seems to have not developed any such sense.

Or maybe he reached the conclusion he did because he's so good at coding that everyone else (including us) looks like a monkey. If he's that good, I'll gladly reuse his assembler instructions in my next iPhone app!

Last edited by plamzi : 10-02-2010 at 02:52 PM.
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