Abstract. Using process simulation and AI search methods, we compare software reuse against other possible changes to a project. such as reducing functionality or improving the skills of the programmer population. In one case, two generations of reuse were as good or better than any other project change (but a third and fourth generation of reuse was not useful). In another case, applying reuse to a project was demonstrable worse than several other possible changes to a project. Our conclusion is that the general claims regarding the benefits of software reuse do not hold for specific projects. We argue that the merits of software reuse need to be evaluated in a project by project basis. AI search over process models is useful for such an assessment, particularly when there is not sufficient data for precisely tuning a simulation model.
Software reuse is regarded as a highly important factor in reducing development overheads for new software projects; however, much of the literature is concerned with cost and labor savings that reuse brings to industrial software development and little is known about the inherent risks associated with reuse, particularly in the case of mission and safety-critical software systems. We present the preliminary findings of a research project geared toward assessing the impact of risk in National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) legacy software in flight control systems. We introduce the concept of context variables and the impact they have on reuse within these legacy systems as well as the genealogy classification models, which provide a simple, concise method of mapping reuse between families of software projects.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.