Musings about modularity and programming in the large

Reinout Heeck reinz at desk.org
Wed Jan 23 11:28:31 UTC 2008


Jason Johnson wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Recently working in other high level languages I was thinking about
> how modularity is accomplished in these systems and how we might do it
> in Squeak.


This is a recurring discussion and I often see suggestions like yours: 
postulate a mechanism and discuss its viability. I would call this the 
bottom-up approach.

If we went top-down we could start with specifying what we want to get 
from a module system. I recently came across a paper on J& ('Jet') which 
starts out with a list of requirements we might want to ponder in this 
regard:



http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/2591
"
J&: Nested Intersection for Scalable Software Composition by Nathaniel 
Nystrom, Xin Qi, Andrew C. Myers. 2006.

     We identify the following requirements for general extension and 
composition of software systems:

        1. Orthogonal extension: Extensions may require both new data 
types and new operations.
        2. Type safety: Extensions cannot create run-time type errors.
        3. Modularity: The base system can be extended without modifying 
or recompiling its code.
        4. Scalability: Extensions should be scalable. The amount of 
code needed should be proportional to the functionality added.
        5. Non-destructive extension: The base system should still be 
available for use within the extended system.
        6. Composability of extensions.

     The first three of these requirements correspond to Wadler’s 
expression problem. Scalability (4) is often but not necessarily 
satisfied by supporting separate compilation; it is important for 
extending large software. Non-destructive extension (5) enables existing 
clients of the base system and also the extended system itself to 
interoperate with code and data of the base system, an important 
requirement for backward compatibility. Nested inheritance addresses the 
first five requirements, but it does not support extension composition. 
Nested intersection adds this capability.
"


IMO point 5 is often overlooked in Smalltalk systems, we love extending 
base code but we hardly ever think about isolating these extensions so 
the base code dependents don't get 'confused' by those extensions.



R
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