Software Reuse: Developers' Experiences and Perceptions (Report‪)‬

1. Introduction This article reports on a survey of software developers to gain an understanding of their experiences and perceptions about incorporating already existing code into their new software systems. The motivation for the survey is that software reuse can be a source of cost savings in software development. The survey may help to understand more about the role of a "not invented here" attitude toward using someone else's code. Developers report on their experiences when they attempted to reuse code, and they offer recommendations on ways to achieve higher levels of reuse. Conducting such a survey is consistent with observations in [1] that more investigation is needed on the non-technical factors (such as prevailing attitudes and perceptions) that are barriers to reuse. Developers' viewpoints on reusing code may also provide insight concerning what they look for when considering incorporating code from multiple sources, such as public software libraries, open source software, or off-the-shelf components.