The mythical "reusable code" idea has existed for decades. It showed up shortly after the first lines of code were written. We preach reusability and sometimes strive for it, but it rarely becomes a reality. I've seen various levels of success with this over the years. Everything from "we have a reusable library that 75 percent of us use" to "we have shared code libraries here, but never use them in your projects."
A recent discussion led me to think about this: Why don't more software development organizations have shared code libraries? Is it the pointy-haired bosses preventing it? Team conflicts? Or is it the developers themselves?