5.5 Conclusion

Conclusion

Managing the development process is essential for successful object-oriented applications. The bigger a project, the harder it is to manage the development process. When you reach a level where you want to reuse code across projects (which should be the ultimate target of every object-oriented development effort), it seems impossible if you don't have the proper tools.

People often tell me that they spend a lot of time learning to use object-oriented technology, but they don't experience the level of desired success when it comes to code reuse. Typically, my first question is whether they do any object modeling or other kinds of designs. The answer to this question is often "No," which isolates the problem right there. Sometimes the answer is "Yes," but components still cannot be reused successfully. When analyzing the problem further, I often discover that the problem is a lack of process or management for reusing classes. No tools are utilized. Classes are simply copied into new directories, dropped into new projects, and sometimes even changed to fit new needs, making it impossible to use the newer versions of those classes in future versions of existing projects. This entirely defeats the purpose of object-oriented programming. Simply using tools such as the Class Browser and (even more important) the Component Gallery can solve most of these problems.