Introduction to Software Design Principles
Software Design is one of the promising phases of the entire software development lifecycle which deals with the entire design pattern and principles of the software development lifecycle. Software design principles start from gathering requirements, analysis, designing until coding plays a very emphasizing role in software design principles. Software design principles are the backbone or the support system for any software designing and development. Following these principles need proper principles and practices otherwise all software will move into the threat of becoming old as no new feature enhancement will ultimately lead to making software as legacy software.
Factors of Software Design Principles
Software design principles are the principles that are mandatorily needed to get the software to become bug-free and not to make the software getting on the verge of an end. It should be kept in mind to make some new feature enhancement or maintenance as spontaneous and continuous. If proper time is given to the designing factor of the SDLC then at a later point of time it will not take much time to modify and survive with the latest changes. One example will clear the importance of and need for using software Design Principles.
Example: Suppose your architect asked you to write some code for developing an application to change the date and time according to the IST and EST of the country timings. Being a good developer, you developed the application properly with the IST and EST timing code format synchronized and written a very good and handy code for it. Later point of time it came as your architect asked you to make some enhancement regarding the code saying one more timing zone is needed to be added i.e. UTC time zone also to be synchronized with the IST and EST timings. Now come into the picture the scenario where the developer must make a change on the code snippet on top of the previously written code. The developer will successfully achieve it but not realizing the background schema where the developer has started making a blunder. The developer already initiated to create a messy and bug-prone, complex application.
Several factors are impacting this good practice of following software design principles:
- Repetitive Coding: In the first instance when the developer starts coding, he or she does not realize that what will be the future consequence of it. Therefore, it goes on smooth and the application development never become that much cumbersome.
- Tight Coupling: Tight coupling here refers to the algorithms and the coding statements and conditions are overridden and repetitive which leads to the tight coupling.
- Immobility: Till the time development is within the local system and not deployed on the customer premises it is ok, but as soon as it comes out for feature enhancement and maintenance it will lose its novelty.
- Coupling and Dealing with the Other Modules and Frameworks: Working with the same framework until handing it over to the next end-user is tolerable but then again if enhancement is required there might be a chance that any new framework or new technology is needed to be supported with the current application of the software being developed.
Hence from the example, it is very much clear to keep the SDLC practice and design part if the cycle to be appropriate and future development environment-friendly.
Top 5 Design Principles of Software Development
Some good design principles of software development are as follows:
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1. Application Development into Smaller Modules
Lets first see the Division of Application Development Into Smaller Modules and Adding an Abstraction Layer on Top of Each Layer. It is very much needed for a developer to divide the application into smaller modules so that any rectification is easier to debug as well as to add an extra layer of abstraction so that in a later point of time it becomes easy for the other developer or someone else to analyze the software which will be used for feature enhancement.
2. Proper Requirement Gathering as a Change
Requirement gathering is another factor of software designing where it gets changed devastatingly. Sometimes the customers or clients need some new tool to be used or some new feature to be implemented on top of the abstraction layer described before this design factor and practice. Moreover, after following the agile methodology it has become very difficult to make the requirements freeze. Therefore, before starting software development the architecture for software design must be created keeping in mind the future implementation and development paradigm.
3. Modularity as a Paradigm for Separation of Concern
Modularity is a very good format to be used whenever a complex situation is arising even in daily life scenarios the same applies to software development. If a bigger and complex gets divided and distributed in a smaller chunk or code snippets it will be easier to solve any big problem. Also, the code should not be repetitive. It should be designed in a way that in the mere future when a code change is required it should not be a case that repetitive code snippet is being used. It should be a case wherein just a line of code or line should get changed and other code snippets should not get affected with that change, but the problem should get sorted out. Optimized and structured way with small code snippet change can easily solve the entire procedure of good snippet modularity. Just need to call the modularity and it should be able to make itself used within an abstraction layer.
Modularity has several key benefits:
- Testing and Debugging
- Reusability
- Extensibility
4. Flowcharts and User Representation for Extendibility
Graphical Representation and symbols are always a very good way of communication and understandability similar is the case with software design as software products are divided into some categories such as software to produce the desired software or user-centered software whatever the need is it has to follow some set of procedures or ways there these kinds of software to be used directly with the other software plays a good role as architect level designing can be created automatically without any human intervention.
5. Simple and Appropriate
Software designing should be simple. Each class and method have written should have a common purpose. Every new enhancement should be easy to embed with the legacy software and make the entire software easy to maintain as well.
Conclusion
Software design principles are very good ways and practices which are needed to be followed as part of the software development lifecycle. It helps in the mere future for the good developers to make changes and maintain them at their best without breaking and corrupting the software’s working feature.
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