ON ANALOGY FOR SOFTWARE REUSE: A PERSPECTIVE FROM CYBERNETICS

Principles developed in cybernetics and systems theory can offer meaningful hindsight to research and development in computer science and may also provide some kind of guidance to the future study of computer science. In this paper we provide some comments on the role of analogy in software reuse from the perspective of cybernetics. Our purpose is to encourage a dialogue between researchers in software engineering and those in the study of cybernetics and systems. Three aspects of cybernetics are examined: the two-dimensional nature of cybernetics and systems theory, software reuse as a form of self-adaptation that originated from the abstract schema implied by analogy, and the nonrational cognitive process involved in using analogy for software reuse. We hope that cybernetics can provide meaningful insight related to analogy in software reuse; we also hope this kind of study will benefit cybernetics itself.