I remember when Communications of ACM used to have computer science articles.
Who says one of the bedrock ideas of good software engineering is reuse of code libraries holding easily accessible implementations of common algorithms and facilities. is really the case? One of the better pieces of software known (qmail) avoids libraries because of unknown side effects.
Software reuse, I think, is the desire of a certain kind management and not so much computer scientists or engineers. How much reuse is in PAIP or TAOCP?
This is ACM Queue rather than CACM, which is more software-engineering/practitioner oriented rather than CS-oriented.
On the other hand, CACM isn't really that CS-oriented anymore, either: http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2011/3. Partly it's because "CS" is so big a field that it's not clear what a technical yet completely general CS journal would look like. So it writes more about computing as a field, with a few articles on emerging areas thrown in, while the technical articles go to more specialized venues (like a PLs, systems, or AI journal).
To be fair, Bill, qmail doesn't avoid libraries; it avoid libc. Much of qmail is structured reusably, and, indeed, the core libc-replacement libraries are reused in djbdns as well.
Knuth has argued specifically against reuse in the past. He prefers "re-editable code".
That being said, the sorts of problems concerning the Knuths of this world are decidedly not the sorts of problems I find myself facing every day. I'm happy enough not hacking an HTTP client into shape for every project that needs one, for instance.
Who says one of the bedrock ideas of good software engineering is reuse of code libraries holding easily accessible implementations of common algorithms and facilities. is really the case? One of the better pieces of software known (qmail) avoids libraries because of unknown side effects.
Software reuse, I think, is the desire of a certain kind management and not so much computer scientists or engineers. How much reuse is in PAIP or TAOCP?