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Can We Avoid High Coupling?

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ECOOP 2011 – Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2011)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 6813))

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Abstract

It is considered good software design practice to organize source code into modules and to favour within-module connections (cohesion) over between-module connections (coupling), leading to the oft-repeated maxim “low coupling/high cohesion”. Prior research into network theory and its application to software systems has found evidence that many important properties in real software systems exhibit approximately scale-free structure, including coupling; researchers have claimed that such scale-free structures are ubiquitous. This implies that high coupling must be unavoidable, statistically speaking, apparently contradicting standard ideas about software structure. We present a model that leads to the simple predictions that approximately scale-free structures ought to arise both for between-module connectivity and overall connectivity, and not as the result of poor design or optimization shortcuts. These predictions are borne out by our large-scale empirical study. Hence we conclude that high coupling is not avoidable—and that this is in fact quite reasonable.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand

    Craig Taube-Schock & Ian H. Witten

  2. University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada

    Robert J. Walker

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  1. Craig Taube-Schock
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  2. Robert J. Walker
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  3. Ian H. Witten
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Software Technology group, Technische Universität, Darmstadt, Germany

    Mira Mezini

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© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Taube-Schock, C., Walker, R.J., Witten, I.H. (2011). Can We Avoid High Coupling?. In: Mezini, M. (eds) ECOOP 2011 – Object-Oriented Programming. ECOOP 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6813. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-22655-7_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-22655-7_10

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-22654-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-22655-7

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