Reliable software through composite design

What Hacker News says

1. ftlioJan 2023
   On the subject of modules, I often recommend “Composite / Structured Design” and/or “Reliable Software Through Composite Design” by Glenford Myers.

   It’s old. The examples are in PL/I. But his framework for identifying “Functional Strength” and Data Coupling is something every developer should have. Keep in mind this is before functional programming and OOP.

   I personally think it could be updated around his concepts of data homogeneity. Interfaces and first class functions are structures he didn't have available to him, but don’t require any new categories on his end, which is to say his critique still seems solid.

   Overall, most Best Practices stuff all seem either derivative of or superfluous to this guy just actually classifying modules by their boundaries and data.

   I should note, I haven't audited his design methodologies, which I'm sure are quite dated. His taxonomy concerning modules was enough for me.

   "The Art of Software Testing" is another of his. I picked up his whole corpus concerning software on thriftbooks for like $20.

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2. wallstprogJul 2019
   "Those who do not learn history are condemned to repeat it".

   I came up writing code in BAL, COBOL, PL/1 and a bunch of other non-OOP languages, and those who think procedural programming is better have probably never done it. The starting point for OOP, at least for me, was the splendid book "Reliable Software through Composite Design" by Glenford Myers, which was the first to study coupling, cohesion and other techniques that lead directly to OOP. This book still maintains a position of honor on my shelf, and I strongly recommend it for anyone doing software development. (You can get a pdf from https://archive.org/details/reliablesoftware00myer or buy your own hard-copy at https://www.amazon.com/Reliable-software-through-composite-d...).

   Now, crappy programmers can write crappy code in any language, just as good programmers can write good code in any language -- the prevalance of crappy code speaks more to the numbers of crappy programmers than crappy languages. I would suggest that OOP enables crappy programmers to write code simply because without OOP crappy programmers wouldn't be able to write any code at all.

   When functional programming is able to provide performance on a par with non-functional programming, we can talk about it. Until then it is a curiosity, but not ready for prime-time.

   To paraphrase Winston Churchill's comments on democracy: "OOP is the worst programming paradigm ever invented -- except for all the other ones".

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3. gregjorMar 2012
   Surprised Tufte's books aren't on the second list. I see programmers referring to Tufte but I doubt many have read his books. I recommend them.

   I nominate Stepanov's Elements of Programming to the second list. Beautiful, dense, and a perpetual shelf ornament. Stepanov's papers, especially the one that launched the STL, Fundamentals of Generic Programming (with James Dehnert) is a masterpiece.

   I have some favorites that show my age:

   Software Tools by Kernighan and Plauger. Can be thought of as the poor-man's Dragon book.

   The Practice Of Programming by Kernighan and Pike. As if the UNIX way needed any defending after almost 40 years.

   Reliable Software Through Composite Design and Composite/Structured Design by Glenford Myers. You have to get past the ancient languages and flowcharts. These books describe modularity and module strength and coupling and are full of good ideas that still apply.

   Database In Depth by C.J. Date, for programmers who haven't read Date's textbook on databases and probably don't need to. I do wish the NoSQL weenies would read Date's Introduction To Database Systems for some history and humility. Database technology has been there, done that, moved on.

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