Hi Charles, On the contrary reusing code is not cheating. It is actually one of the core principles behind object oriented languages like Java, Python, and C# .NET. Code reuse is one of the major principles, foundations, drilled into new programming students heads when they enter a tech school or university. For example, object oriented languages use a technique called inheritance. Inheritance allows a programmer to expand or extend a piece of existing code to meet the demands of a new program. This saves lots of time because the base functionality of the existing code remains the same, but is improved or specialized by the new code extension. Another cool feature of modern programming languages is known as polymorphism. With this technique you can create several methods with the same name but different parameters. The compiler or runtime environment will be able to figure out which method you are using and correctly execute your code. This symplifies things by allowing you to use the same code but differently on a case by case basis. Software companies that are in it for the long hall tend to create development kits which are typically core libraries or applications that can be used to quickly put together new applications with a common framework. Often times development kits can be based on other development kits that might be based on more lower level development kits to symplify or specialise a development kit for a specific need. For example let us say USA Games creates a sdk for game programming. That development kit might be based on the .NET Framework and Managed DirectX which are development kits from Microsoft based on lower level development kits like Win32 and the DirectX com components. All of it is possible through object oriented design that can be extended and reextended as needed. Everytime you extend an applications code it gets more specialised and yet still has the base functionality at the top of the code tree. For example, let us say we make a class called starship. This holds all the generic data for a starship. Well, we need something more specific so we create a class called Federation which Extends starship with some specific features of Federation starships. However, the Federation has all kinds of starships so we need to subclass them in To Galaxy Class, Defiant Class, Sovereign Class, Constitution Class, etc. If we want to add some enemy ships we could extend the Starship class by adding a class called Romulan, and then subclasses of Romulan ships. Do you see how the code tree works?
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