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\iteman{io-port 05942516}
\itemau{Taube-Schock, Craig; Walker, Robert J.; Witten, Ian H.}
\itemti{Can we avoid high coupling?}
\itemso{Mezini, Mira (ed.), ECOOP 2011 -- object-oriented programming. 25th European conference, Lancaster, UK, July 25--29, 2011. Proceedings. Berlin: Springer (ISBN 978-3-642-22654-0/pbk). Lecture Notes in Computer Science 6813, 204-228 (2011).}
\itemab
Summary: 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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\itemli{doi:10.1007/978-3-642-22655-7\_10}
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