Software reusability: a survey and a reusability experiment

One way to increase software productivity is to reuse existing code, designs and specifications. This paper examines the characteristics of software reusability from the points of view of software engineering as well as knowledge engineering. Various approaches from each perspective are described and evaluated. In addition, an experiment in reusing existing program modules and code segments are performed. In the process, a prototype structure-editor with the code reusability in mind is developed.