Code reuse

In software development (and computer programming in general), code reuse, also called software reuse, is the use of existing software, or software knowledge, to build new software,^: 7 following the reusability principles.

Code reuse may be achieved by different ways depending on a complexity of a programming language chosen and range from a lower-level approaches like code copy-pasting (e.g. via snippets), simple functions (procedures or subroutines) or a bunch of objects or functions organized into modules (e.g. libraries)^: 7 or custom namespaces, and packages, frameworks or software suites in higher-levels.

Code reuse implies dependencies which can make code maintainability harder. At least one study found that code reuse reduces technical debt.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.