> Strongly agreed. Exposure to a History & Philosophy of Software course might reduce the amount of wheel reinvention that plagues our industry. I agree that w

> Strongly agreed. Exposure to a History & Philosophy of Software course might reduce the amount of wheel reinvention that plagues our industry. I agree that wheel reinvention is an issue that needs addressing but not to the extent as you describe (a "plague"). I also believe this comment misunderstands why it happens. As it stands today, it is a feature, not a bug. You don't see reinvention a lot in traditional engineering disciplines because you have something concrete and functional that takes years of research and hours of construction. Any hacker with a laptop can pick up a language and start building stuff. This ease of access is what creates the "wheel reinvention" situation, that and an endless amount of choices and a limited amount of discoverability of what is out there. Exposure to history and philosophy of software would do nothing to address that. Finally, reinvention is seen as virtue in this industry, not a plague. To some degree, I agree: software is never complete. And even if you think so, the software built underneath your software may change, thus changing your software. Some level of reinvention may come with new considerations that were not considerations of the past.