Architecture word program diagrams software#
Architecture word program diagrams code#

Architecture word program diagrams code#

When it comes to dependencies visualization in a code base the usual boxes and arrows dependency graph is the royal kind of diagram to use. For example relying on IEnumerable only, means that the code can work with any collection of T (array, list, hashset…).

Depending on a base class or an interface means that the code can operate on a wider range of objects.

Inheritance: It is not only a powerful way of reusing code, but it also lets the client code decides which level of specialization it should depend on, the lower the better.

Polymorphism: Avoid being dependent on implementation that is chosen at runtime, based on various criteria: type of the target object, generic type parameter ( parametric polymorphism) or even type of the object passed as parameter ( double dispatching in the visitor pattern).

Abstraction: Avoid being dependent on implementation details that typically change more often than carefully thought-out abstraction.

Encapsulation: Let decide which element the outside world can depend on and which element must be kept private within an implementation.

Architecture word program diagrams software#

Software architecture relates to dependencies between the various elements of a code base: components, packages, namespaces, classes, methods, fields… All Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) concepts are somehow related to dependencies: In this post I will describe our code visualization choices. This is not surprising that I created the tool NDepend 15 years ago that now proposes several software architecture diagrams. I always had a passion for visualizing existing code and clean architecture. Unfortunately this scenario is more the rule than the exception in the software industry. The code base ends up being a mess (spaghetti code metaphor) and the cost of maintenance becomes prohibitive.

Consequences of the lack of control on the code structure are entangled components, code smells and architecture erosion. In this post we’ll focus on the static view.Īny sufficiently large enough system cannot be mastered without some sort of visualization. On the other hand caring for the dynamic view is useful for performance and memory management purposes. Clean architecture leads to high maintainability, less error-prone code and overall it keeps developers both productive and motivated.

It is important to distinguish between the static view of code (how classes depend on each other in source code) and the dynamic view of code (how objects reference each each other at runtime).ĭesigning clean architecture is related to the static view of code. This famous motto means that no matter how many diagrams you draw and discuss with your colleagues, what matters is how the existing source code is actually structured.