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The ACCU passes on review copies of computer books to its members for them to review. The result is a large, high quality collection of book reviews by programmers, for programmers. Currently there are 1949 reviews in the database and more every month.
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Title:
Managing Software Reuse
Author:
Wayne Lim
ISBN:
0 13 552373 7
Publisher:
Prentice Hall
Pages:
552pp
Price:
£33-50
Reviewer:
Francis Glassborow
Subject:
re-usable code
Appeared in:
11-1
While the author knows his subject and has researched it comprehensively he has no pity for his readers. Of course reuse is valuable and many companies are still naive about it but there must be a better way to educate them than with books such as this one.

My complaint is not with the technical content but with a linguistic style that stands between me and the information that I want. Let me quote a couple of sentences.

'An analysis can also be performed to determine the economic viability for assets under consideration to be made reusable.' 'Software quality factors that may be improved by reuse include functionality, correctness, usability, reliability, supportability, flexibility, localizability, and interoperability.' The first of these sentences is ugly and the second seems to be an exercise in listing types of quality.

Let me give you one more example. There is a table on page 186 headed 'Reuse Maturity Framework. There are six columns headed:

'Dimensions of maturity', '1. Initial/Chaotic', '2. Monitored', '3. Coordinated', '4 Planned' and '5. Integrated.' The first row of the table has these entries:

  1. Motivation/culture
  2. Reuse is discouraged
  3. Reuse is noted indifferently reinforced, rewarded
  4. Reuse is incentivized
  5. Reuse is indoctrinated
  6. Reuse is 'the way we do business'
If you think you have the time to wade through this book and provide a more insightful review please let me know and you are welcome to the review copy.