This dissertation defines "modular-objective coupling", and shows that programming language designs which imply reduced modular-objective coupling reduce complexity of remodularizations--behaviour-preserving restructurings for which the only intended goals are to change program source code structure.
We explicitly distinguish between two points of view on program structure: modular structure--the structure of a program as a set of static text documents, and objective structure--the structure of a program as a dynamic computational model during execution. We define modular-objective coupling as the degree to which changes in modular structure imply changes to objective structure, for a given programming language.
We use the term remodularization to refer to any behaviour-preserving source code restructuring, for which the only intended goal is to change modular structure. We argue that programming languages with strong modular-objective coupling introduce accidental complexity into remodularizations, by requiring complex objective structure changes to achieve intended modular structure changes. Our claim is that a programming language design which implies reduced modular-objective coupling reduces remodularization complexity in the language.
To validate this claim, we first present SubjectJ, a subject-oriented programming system that extends Java. The design of Java implies strong modular-objective coupling, while SubjectJ is designed for reduced modular-objective coupling. We then perform a series of remodularization case studies comparing Java and SubjectJ. Our results suggest that remodularizations are less complex in SubjectJ. / Science, Faculty of / Computer Science, Department of / Graduate
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UBC/oai:circle.library.ubc.ca:2429/1380 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Chern, Rick |
| Publisher | University of British Columbia |
| Source Sets | University of British Columbia |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis/Dissertation |
| Format | 2958670 bytes, application/pdf |
| Rights | Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ |
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