Software reuse is more like an organ transplant than snapping Lego blocks (2011)

Re:Software reuse is more like an organ transplant than snap... by _bxg1 on Wednesday June 24, 2020 @04:25PM (#23633418)

I would argue that it thrives in those most basic cases, and isn't really suited to building truly complex systems. But I also don't think there's anything wrong with that. There's a use-case for simple pieces that are easy to snap together, and I think that use-case has been greatly under-served because lots of things that aim for it end up as complicated, multi-faceted APIs.

You could almost say that micro-services are trying to follow in the Unix tradition. But the problem is that a) they don't really get used in that ideal, small-scale use-case because they're almost always written and consumed internally, not exposed to the public, and b) they do get used in those huge, complex cases where their lego-ness stops being a virtue and starts being a liability.

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Re:Software reuse is more like an organ transplant than snap... by TAForObvReasons on Wednesday June 24, 2020 @04:34PM (#23633525)

> starts being a liability

SaaS is all the rage now, and the business of SaaS is disincentivized from making "lego-like" software. The easier it is to interoperate, arguably the easier it is to replace or reimplement your service.

Because a lot of the value of unix tools is derived from their interoperability, they play nice with each other.

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Re:Software reuse is more like an organ transplant than snap... by _bxg1 on Wednesday June 24, 2020 @04:49PM (#23633699)

Yeah, that is part of the problem too. Any for-profit corp would love to lock people in, and software megacorps no longer need to interoperate for their own survival. So we see increased lock-in across most of the (commercial) software world.

An interesting inverse-example is Slack, which does lots of interop with other services, because it isn't a trillion-dollar company that can attempt to give you everything you need under a single roof.

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Re:Software reuse is more like an organ transplant than snap... by galaxyLogic on Wednesday June 24, 2020 @07:25PM (#23635014)

> I would argue that it thrives in those most basic cases, and isn't really suited to building truly complex systems

Right, just like LEGOS thrive in simple cases, are not suited for building complex systems.

That is why the idea of "Software LEGOs" is not reality. Or you can say that Unix Pipes are "software LEGOs", with similar limitations.

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