NDLI: Reflections on capital-intensive software technology

Content Provider	ACM Digital Library
Author	Wegner, Peter
Abstract	"Capital" is defined as a reusable resource, and it is shown that many software engineering activities are capital-intensive in the sense that they serve to create reusable resources. Just as the Eskimo has many different words for snow, we have many words for reusability, including commonality, portability, modularity, abstraction, generality, equivalence, maintainability, adaptability, and sharability. A plausible conclusion is that reusability of the resources we create is as important in our lives as snow is in the life of the Eskimo. The definition of capital in terms of reusability suggests that the reason for the importance of reusability is in part economic. But the drive to create permanent rather than transitory artifacts has aesthetic and intellectual as well as economic motivations, and is part of man's desire for immortality.
Starting Page	24
Ending Page	33
Page Count	10
File Format	PDF
ISSN	01635948
DOI	10.1145/1005950.1005955
Journal	ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes (SOEN)
Volume Number	7
Issue Number	4
Language	English
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Publisher Date	1979-04-01
Publisher Place	New York
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article

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1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
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Reflections on capital-intensive software technology