Better Building Blocks for Software?

Why are we still creating software by coding? You don't have to saw your own lumber or make your own bricks to build a house, so why are we still writing code? OK, so we have libraries, etc, but I'm thinking of something even more advanced than that. Say you want to add Bayesian filtering to your email program. Why can't I just take an off-the-shelf module, configure it and plug it in?

I don't know much about aspect-oriented programming, but it seems to address a few similar problems.


Adding Bayesian filtering to email seems natural. It is so good at removing spam, now how about applying it to sort our cluttered inboxes? After creating a few folders to store messages, the filter can be be trained to sort your mail for you, and you should have the option of automatic sorting, or having the messages remain in your inbox, with buttons to move the message to the most likely folders.

One of my pet peeves is Google's Gmail 'search, don't sort' paradigm. We categorize things to help us understand, store, browse and find. On the other hand, they do provide a labelling feature, which is nicer than folders as emails often belong to more than one category.