The Pragmatic Craftsman         :: Simplicity from complexity :: | About Me |

Uncle Bob listed a few Design smells -- the odors of rotting software in his book Agile Software Development. Take the inverse of that and what do you get? Criteria for good design -- that's the approach that the author of the book PHP in Action took.

Here are the characteristics of good design.

1. Flexibility - easy to change


2. Robustness - hard to break


3. Mobility - easy to disentagle into reusable components


4. Fluidity - easy to do things right


5. Simplicity


6. Once and only once


7. Transparency - easy to read and understand

Very good criteria, in my opinion.