In late 1985, I gave a presentation on a reusable class library at Rockwell International in Los Angeles, California. After the presentation, one of the technical people in the audience told me that he agreed that reuse was a good thing, and that the particular class library I was discussing would indeed meet his needs. However, he also informed me that reuse takes all the fun out of programming. This is a sentiment unfortunately still shared by many software practitioners.
Some programmers take a more macho view regarding reuse.
Only a wimp would reuse somebody else's code. , they say. This is a common variant on the knowledge is power theme. The idea is to make the creation and maintenance of software appear as difficult as possible, thus insuring continued employment at a relatively high rate of compensation. Some corporate and technical managers also exhibit less than honorable intentions when it comes to software reuse. Some organizations are paid on a per-person basis for software development efforts.