[thelist] pricing for reused elements

Warden, Matt mwarden at mattwarden.com
Sun Nov 4 10:29:04 CST 2001


On Nov 4, Daryl Grant had something to say about RE: [thelist] pricing for...

>Reused code is well tested in multiple environments and situations, making
>it more reliable than code that would be written and used in a single,
>isolated environment. Because of this, reusing code in future projects would
>actually benefit those clients. One must be careful though, becauase if
>there is an ugly, hidden bug in the reused code, every project that made use
>of it will need to be revisited.

I'm not sure I agree with that logic. If Client A has System A, and you
code it custom for System A, I don't see how it would benefit Client A at
all if you decided to make sure it worked on System B, System C, etc,
other than the ability to change systems.

And, as you see in the case of Java, there's a tradeoff when you
generalize your code to work in multiple systems and don't take
advantage of the strengths (and don't avoid the weaknesses) of each
particular system.

Plus, when specific features need to be added to reused code, there's
always a chance they won't quite fit and will be "hacked" in.

Not that reused code is bad, but I don't think it benefits subsequent
clients other than lower developement costs.


thanks,


--
mattwarden
mattwarden.com





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