Developing new software can be a very time consuming task. Thankfully, it is very easy to share the code and resources from previously developed software, making it very simple for large numbers of programmers to collectively work together, sometimes completely indirectly, to solve a new problem.

In this chapter, we’re going to explore software libraries and how we can take advantage of easily reusable pieces of software to make our job as programmers even easier. We’ve already used several of these libraries in our programs, but this is a good chance to step back and take a look at the broader software ecosystem and how it all fits together.

In this chapter, we’ll learn about the following concepts:

• Software library
• Software framework
• Class library
• Static library
• Shared library
• Standard libraries
• Java JAR files
• Python wheel files
• Software licenses
• Open-source software
• Proprietary software
• Repositories

In the following chapter, we’ll learn how to use the tools we’ve already explored in this class, plus a few additional tools, in order to create our own software libraries that we can distribute based on our code. We’ll also explore how to use an external library in our ongoing project, including how to manually install one that isn’t available in a repository.