should effort go into reuse above maintainability and extensibility?

Master and Student

 

Master:  Grasshopper， tell me what you have learned of the Object-Oriented ways.

Student: Master, I have learned that the promise of the OO way is reuse.

M:  Grasshopper, continue…

S:  Master, through inheritance all good things may be reused and so we will come to drastically cut development time like we swiftly cut bamboo in the wood.

M:  Grasshopper, is more time spend on code before or after development is complete?

S:  The answer is after, Master. We always spend more time maintaining and changing software than initial development.

M:  So Grasshopper, should effort go into reuse above maintainability and extensibility?

S:     Master, I believe that there is truth in this.

M:    I can see that you still have much to learn. I would like for you to go and meditate on inheritance further. As you’ve seen, inheritance has its problems, and there are other ways of achieving reuse.