top | item 36973829

Show HN: I wrote a compendium of software design

28 points| matteodt | 2 years ago |software-design.matteoditucci.com

12 comments

order

uticus|2 years ago

> Simple code: > > Passes all tests > Expresses intent > Does not repeat itself > Does not contain superfluous parts

Good start. Of course everyone will have differences in what should be generally emphasized, I would add my PR sessions also look for sane logic and accurate modeling. In very simple terms, sane logic being: are control structures called at the right time, accurate modeling being: how well does it match ideas.

matteodt|2 years ago

Interesting bit about sane logic. Is it something you verify manually by reading the pull request code? Or do you rather expect automated tests that use something like spies to check when a control structure is called?

In my coding life, I had a period where I was super into test driven development with mocks and I believe I was doing something very similar to what you called sane logic check. However, I later dropped this approach in favor of heavily parametrized tests where checks happen only on the output of functions and on side effects when necessary (e.g. an email is sent or a row is updated in the database).

Note: I am using this Martin Fowler's definition for "spies": https://martinfowler.com/bliki/TestDouble.html

frfl|2 years ago

Really interesting. I've been toying with the idea of writing something similar, but a bit more broader in scope about backend/frontend development.

Last commit on the github repo was 9 months ago. Is this still being working on?

matteodt|2 years ago

I started writing it during the Covid pandemic (2021), then I stopped when roughly half of the chapters were complete.

I am starting again now with the idea of finishing it by the end of 2023, but I wanted to give it another try here on HN to collect some feedback as my first submission went completely unnoticed.

What you mentioned about backend/frontend is actually very cool. In my original plan I wanted to produce three compendia: 1. Software design 2. Software architecture 3. Tech leadership

Still in my mind, but considering I am yet to complete the first one, it is going to take a while :)

Let me know if you ever go down that road! I would be very curious to read it.

ano88888|2 years ago

would love to see something equivalent for functional or lispy software design guide instead of object oriented approch.

matteodt|2 years ago

When I started writing I was on the fence about making the compendium programming paradigm agnostic. However, I was worried it would be too abstract so I anchored it to object oriented.

I believe many concepts mentioned in the compendium are still valid for the functional paradigm, but definitely the examples are not.

Thanks for the input! I'll reason about how to reconciliate OO and FP once I finished the remaining chapters!