Chapter 7: Digging Into Source Code

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I am never forget the day I first meet the great Lobachevsky. In one word he told me secret of success in mathematics: Plagiarize!… Only be sure always to call it please “research.”

—Tom Lehrer, Lobachevsky

Overview

In software development, of course, we don’t call it plagiarism or research, but finding reusable source code is an important technique because it increases our efficiency by relieving us of the need to “reinvent the wheel.” That’s one of the topics that I’ll be discussing in this chapter. But before I look at sources of code that you can use in your own projects, I want to show you how to look more deeply at the code that you already have on your computer, by using a variety of spelunking utilities. Seeing how someone else (perhaps a member of Microsoft’s .NET development team) solved a problem may be the fastest way to solve a similar problem yourself.

Note

One thing to keep in mind is that you should be sure you have the rights to reuse code before you actually do so. Just as you will probably apply license terms to your own code to spell out what others can do with it, you must respect the licensing terms of code owned by others. (I’ll talk more about licensing in Chapter 14, “Protecting Your Intellectual Property.”) If you’re not sure that you can legally reuse code, don’t do it.

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