Object-Oriented Programming and Reusability

Some recent commentaries have suggested that Object-Oriented Programming has not been successful in increasing the productivity of software engineers. The main argument is that the object structure is not sufficiently reusable in different contexts. Alternative strategies involving "software components" have been proposed. In this paper, we explore the connection between object-oriented programming and reusability. We show that object-oriented programming does support design for reusability, but does so in ways that are not well understood. The designer must make careful decisions with reusability in mind, and in particular must include consideration of reusability in the process of class identification and class organisation. 1 Introduction Proponents of object-oriented programming (OOP) claim it as the solution to the creation of reusable software, the holy grail of software engineering. Now however, some commentaries suggest it has not lived up to expectations ("Object technolog..