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CHAPTER

21

Reuse in the world of end userprogrammers

Christopher Scaffidi, Mary ShawKelley Engineering Center, Oregon State University

ABSTRACT

End user programmers often reuse one another’s code when creating new programs, but this reuse is rarely as clean or simple as the black box reuse that professional programmers aspire to achieve. In this chapter, we explore the motivations that drive reuse of end user code, the challenges that impede reuse of end user code, and several approaches that facilitate reuse of end user code. We give particular emphasis to the problem of helping end users to identify high-quality reusable code amid the millions of scripts, macros, spreadsheets, and other programs produced by essentially anonymous users out on ...