Where Programming Ends and Engineering Starts
Ask a developer if he is developing the same software as in his previous engagements, and most of the time the answer is "no". On first sight it looks reasonable, if you consider that he has been working on a different project, in a different company, or even within a different industry vertical. But when we analyze the code that is actually developed, this is most peculiar. Code is made up of business logic and "plumbing". Business logic is around 5% of the total code and project specific. The rest is plumbing that is not specific to the requirements of the project. If 95% of the code is not specific to the project, how can it be that we are not writing mostly the same code? The reason is often simple, the business logic is not isolated from the plumbing. This causes the plumbing code to become project contextual; the plumbing code is full of traces of business logic and thus specific to the project. Thus the potential 95% that should be project agnostic can