Software Development: Building Reliable Systems

Chapter 17. Component-Based Software Development

Every software developer knows that it is easier to write ten 100 line programs than to write a single 1,000 line program. Furthermore, any software development manager knows it is easier to manage the development of ten 100 line programs than a single 1,000 line program. Of course the problem is that most stand-alone software programs being written today require much more than 100 or even 1,000 lines of code to implement their required functionality. Breaking a monolithic 1,000 line program into ten 100 line programs, however, can be a slow, expensive task. If fact, if you were to try and break a typical 1,000 line C or FORTRAN program into ten parts, each part would end up being significantly ...