Class Distance From The Main Sequence

 Just a quick post to put an idea out there.

Yes. Another half-baked idea... But bear with me for a minute.

So, fans of OO design quality metrics (and that's all six of us I'm talking to) will be familiar with a metric that indicates whether our inter-package dependencies are tending to go towards more abstract packages. It's called distance from the main sequence. The design principle it's based on is the Stable Abstractions principles, which states clearly that packages that are more depended upon should be more open to extension and less open to modification - i.e., more abstract.

It occurs to me that the same goes at the class level. But we tend to just think of abstractness of classes as being two-valued - abstract or not abstract.

But is an abstract class with some methods implemented and others left purely virtual as abstract as an interface with no implementation at all? I don't think so. I think the interface is totally abstract and the abstract class is partially abstract. And therefore, I reckon we could propose a measure of class abstractness. Since classes can have efferent and afferent couplings (outgoing and incoming dependencies on other classes), it would therefore be possible to come up with a distance from the main sequence style of metric for classes as well as packages.

The mind boggles!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

83% of Developers Suffer from Burnout

  The Covid-19 pandemic has led to a significant increase in burnout among software developers. According to a study conducted by Haystack Analytics , a firm that focuses on engineer productivity, 83% of software developers experience burnout. The primary causes cited for this exhaustion are excessive workloads (47%), inefficiencies in processes (31%), and ambiguity in objectives and targets (29%). Most areas of human activity have had to rely on technology to remain productive during the coronavirus pandemic, including implementing telework. For the most part, businesses saw significant productivity gains in 2020, directly related to the widespread use of telework. Some are even anticipating a total productivity gain of 17% over the next two to three years. In addition, through telework, 88% have realized savings on real estate expenses over the past year. Similarly, 92% expect further savings in the next two to three years. However, has maintaining or increasing productiv
Read more

Lessons for Young Programmers: What You Need to Know

 In the past 7.5 years I have supervised over a dozen programming interns and have seen hundreds of portfolios of students and graduates. In almost all of those I saw the same things that they needed to learn. One might expect that I think they need to learn specific techniques, algorithms or math, or other forms of specific knowledge. And of course they do, but in my opinion that is never the main thing. The main thing they need to learn is self discipline. The discipline to always write the clearest code you can, the discipline to refactor code if it becomes muddy through changes later in development, the discipline to remove unused code and add comments. Most of the time I spend supervising programming interns is spent on these topics. Not on explaining advanced technologies or the details of our engine, but on making them write better code in general. I always ask applicants what they think is important in being a good programmer and they usually answer that code should be cle
Read more

Hell Is Other Architects

 One of the thornier facets of being a "design authority" is that you are invariably called upon to make a professional assessment of other peoples' designs. (In a process, often compared to pulling fingernails, known as a "design review"). A team of developers might get a little precious about someone like me asking awkward questions about the design of their code, but that's a walk in the park compared to reviewing code that's been architected (by an architect, no less…) Some architects will defend their design decisions to the death, and quite often will use every intellectual and political weapon in their arsenal to repel hostile agressors like myself - godless heathens who have the nerve to saunter nonchalontly into their empires and say things like "should the data access code be in the same classes as the business logic?" and "shouldn't that class that everything else depends on be a bit more abstract?" and other g
Read more