Название: Software Design
Автор: Bechoo Lal
Издательство: Toronto Academic Press
Год: 2024
Страниц: 239
Язык: английский
Формат: pdf (true)
Размер: 37.0 MB

This book is a comprehensive guide to the principles and practices of designing software systems. It covers topics such as software architecture, design patterns, object-oriented design, and software development methodologies. The book is intended for software developers, architects, and project managers who want to learn how to design effective software systems. By following the guidelines provided in this book, readers can create software that is maintainable, scalable, and adaptable to changing requirements.

The importance of design in software development cannot be overstated. Software design is complex for a variety of reasons. It is significantly more challenging to teach and learn software design. There have been numerous textbooks created on software design. Most focus on a single program design method, such as object-oriented software development. Few, however, have tackled software design at a higher level of abstraction, such as the methodological level, which is the focus of this subject.

In my experience teaching software design in advanced undergraduate courses and overseeing student dissertation projects, I’ve discovered that students frequently have misconceptions about software design. One of the most widespread misconceptions about software design is that there is only one correct answer to each design problem. Many software design textbooks provide case studies and examples, but few offer many answers to a single design problem. A prevalent fallacy to software design approaches is that using a well-established design method correctly always results in the correct solution to a design problem.

As a result, many students rush to the implementation stage of their dissertation projects after completing a design without extensively analyzing and assessing it; even fewer thought of creating alternative ideas and comparing them. Few software design textbooks tackle how to analyze a design and compare different software designs. Learning software design techniques might help correct misconceptions about software design methodologies. Theories of software architecture, particularly software architectural styles and architectural design analysis and evaluation, are at the appropriate level of abstraction and are especially useful for correcting students’ mistakes.

Another difficulty in teaching and learning software design is that most students have no prior experience with large-scale, complex software systems. The theories of software architecture also provide an appropriate communication medium for students to learn how to design large-scale software systems. It can combine numerous software engineering, development processes, and programming information taught in multiple courses into a well-organized framework. It also considerably broadens students’ understanding of software systems.