Software Design, Development, and Reuse

Abstraction, while a valuable technique for producing maintainable and understandable systems, impedes reuse in that low level details which are hidden by abstraction must be considered when a component is a candidate for reuse. An entire approach to software development is formulated that focuses on decisions. A modular language is defined to record decisions. This language is constructive in that the decisions describe a structure which represents the design and implementation. Objects in the language include decisions, decision modules, functions, representations, algorithms, interfaces, abstractions, and relations. A reusable component is a decision module or a program module and its associated decision module.