Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

> For example, think of the Microsoft Office suite.

Beneath the covers, don't the Office applications share a lot of common code?




Yes, but I would not think about it as code sharing. MSI (the installation technology used by Office and most Windows programs) supports the notion of "Shared Components," which allows applications to share common resources. A component is a discrete installation unit, and in the case of large products such as the Office suite, many components make up any one product (Word, Excel, etc.). Rather than sharing actual source code or bundling the same DLLs with each Office product, components are shared between the products. You can envision that rather than each product containing the same code used to generate tables, they all use the same piece of code when generating tables. There are a variety of advantages, of which perfect interop between pieces of software is by far the greatest.

More info on shared components: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/heaths/archive/2009/12/21/about-shar...


This (ha! Always wanted to say that; always hated those who say it...).

The Unix philosophy breaks down where it should: where you aren't trying to get something done in a few keystrokes at the command line. Even when you aren't, the Unix philosophy works pretty well servicing low-level portions of a program. For example, any spell checker is Unix-y and many programs have a spell checker.


I've heard conflicting stories about this, that the teams share code and that they're fiercely independent. I imagine there are examples of both.




Consider applying for YC's Spring batch! Applications are open till Feb 11.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: