Software Design for Flexibility: How to Avoid Programming Yourself into a Corner

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Strategies for building large systems that can be easily adapted for new situations with only minor programming modifications.

Time pressures encourage programmers to write code that works well for a narrow purpose, with no room to grow. But the best systems are evolvable; they can be adapted for new situations by adding code, rather than changing the existing code. The authors describe techniques they have found effective–over their combined 100-plus years of programming experience–that will help programmers avoid programming themselves into corners.

The authors explore ways to enhance flexibility by:
Organizing systems using combinators to compose mix-and-match parts, ranging from small functions to whole arithmetics, with standardized interfaces Augmenting data with independent annotation layers, such as units of measurement or provenance Combining independent pieces of partial information using unification or propagation Separating control structure from problem domain with domain models, rule systems and pattern matching, propagation, and dependency-directed backtracking Extending the programming language, using dynamically extensible evaluators
Publisher ‏ : ‎ MIT Press
Publication date ‏ : ‎ 9 March 2021
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 448 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0262045494
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0262045490
Item weight ‏ : ‎ 743 g
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 15.88 x 2.64 x 23.5 cm
Best Sellers Rank: #68,009 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #176 in Software Design, Testing & Engineering #435 in Computer Science #26,792 in Textbooks & Study Guides
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