Software Libraries and Their Reuse: Entropy, Kolmogorov Complexity, and Zipf's Law
<|reference_start|>Software Libraries and Their Reuse: Entropy, Kolmogorov Complexity, and Zipf's Law: We analyze software reuse from the perspective of information theory and Kolmogorov complexity, assessing our ability to ``compress'' programs by expressing them in terms of software components reused from libraries. A common theme in the software reuse literature is that if we can only get the right environment in place-- the right tools, the right generalizations, economic incentives, a ``culture of reuse'' -- then reuse of software will soar, with consequent improvements in productivity and software quality. The analysis developed in this paper paints a different picture: the extent to which software reuse can occur is an intrinsic property of a problem domain, and better tools and culture can have only marginal impact on reuse rates if the domain is inherently resistant to reuse. We define an entropy parameter $H \in [0,1]$ of problem domains that measures program diversity, and deduce from this upper bounds on code reuse and the scale of components with which we may work. For ``low entropy'' domains with $H$ near 0, programs are highly similar to one another and the domain is amenable to the Component-Based Software Engineering (CBSE) dream of programming by composing large-scale components. For problem domains with $H$ near 1, programs require substantial quantities of new code, with only a modest proportion of an application comprised of reused, small-scale components. Preliminary empirical results from Unix platforms support some of the predictions of our model.<|reference_end|>
@article{veldhuizen2005software,
    title={Software Libraries and Their Reuse: Entropy, Kolmogorov Complexity, and
  Zipf's Law},
    author={Todd L. Veldhuizen},
    journal={Library-Centric Software Design (LCSD 2005), an OOPSLA 2005
  workshop},
    year={2005},
    archivePrefix={arXiv},
    eprint={cs/0508023},
    primaryClass={cs.SE cs.IT cs.PL math.IT}
}