The Reuse of Uses in Smalltalk Programming

Short Description
The Smalltalk/V environment contains a rich set of programming tools. … Smalltalk programming typically involves the creation …

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Content
The Reuse of Uses in Smalltalk
Programming
MARY BETH ROSSON and JOHN M. CARROLL
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Software reuse, a long-standing and refractory issue in software technology, has been specifically
emphasized as an advantage of the object-oriented programming paradigm. We report an
empirical study of expert Smalltalk programmers reusing user interface classes in small graphical
applications. Our primary goal was to develop a qualitative characterization of expert reuse
strategies that could be used to identify requirements for teaching and supporting reuse programming.
A secondary interest was to demonstrate to these experts the Reuse View Matcher-a
prototype reuse tool-and to collect some initial observations of this tool in use during reuse
programming. We observed extensive “reuse of uses” in the programmers’ work: they relied
heavily on code in example applications that provided an implicit specification for reuse of the
target class. We called this implicit specification a “usage context.” The programmers searched for
relevant usage contexts early. They repeatedly evaluated the contextualized information to
develop solution plans, and they borrowed and adapted it when the sample context suited their
immediate reuse goals. The process of code development was highly dynamic and incremental;…