Why is large-scale code reuse still an unsolved problem ?

I wanted to title this blog "Extreme Reuse manifesto" - but maybe I will write one of them, so I didn't want to steal my own thunder!

I have always been interested in the challenges of code reuse and lately have been thinking about my direction and the direction of the technology industry as a whole.

There has been some excellent commentary and discussion in Lars Pind's blog post Why Rails won't become OpenACS, or Rails is cool, but can we have a login system? which itself was a follow on from his post Reuse-in-the-large is an unsolved problem: Why I left OpenACS for Rails.

The thinking behind these posts came from this online sample chapter from Facts of Software Engineering Management by Robert Glass (in addition to Lars' experience). The sample chapter is an excellent and provocative read. It looks like an excellent book for anyone who is serious about furthering their understanding of the software development process. Time to track down those good technical book stores in Sydney (that I have been assured exist!).