Stabilize Code by Age
Back in Chapter 2, Identify Code with High Interest Rates, we saw that some parts of our code change more frequently than others. Architectures–the real, physical kind—face the same challenges since buildings aren’t permanent either. Buildings change over time to adapt to new uses, and different parts of a building change at different rates, much like software. This led the writer Stewart Brand to remark that a building tears itself apart “because of the different rates of change of its components.” (See How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built [Bra95].)
Similarly, different rates of change to software components may tear a system apart, resulting in code that’s hard to understand and consequently hard to ...
Get Software Design X-Rays now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
