Code reuse is happening, really
Figure 4 puts a smile on my face. I've always preached the need to reuse code whenever possible, rather than writing from scratch. Too often, developers want to do it "their way." This self-indulgence may offer a slight improvement over the existing code (or it may not), but it almost always causes the project to take longer, even past the original deadline in some cases. The percentage of users who use new code all the time went from 15% down to 11%.

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One of my favorite questions, shown in Figure 5, asked survey takers to rank which areas of the embedded systems industry had seen the most dramatic changes over the past 20 years and would continue to change the most over the next 20. Even with all the technology breakthroughs that we've seen in semiconductor design, more than half of developers still see big changes coming in chip technology. It's no surprise that we expect to see many more changes in global markets over the next 20 years than the previous 20.

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Another noteworthy data point is the time-to-market. As if we didn't have enough problems (and short enough design windows), developers think that "speed to market" will dramatically change going forward. But how will time-to-market decrease if labor-saving methods, such as code reuse, are not adopted.

Barr looked at this question a little differently than I did (half-empty verses half full?). His take was that "it's depressing that 'professionalism and standards' (really the lack thereof) have not been considered to have changed much over the past 20 years. And worse yet, the forward expectations are even lower for change here."