Software Design Principles

6. Software Design Principles#

Sound software design is essential for building research tools that are maintainable, testable, extensible, and reproducible. This section outlines key principles and strategies that guide the structure and evolution of well-architected research codebases.

6.1. Fundamental Design Principles#

6.2. Modularity and Abstraction#

6.3. Testability and Maintainability#

6.4. Reusability and Extensibility#

6.5. Design Patterns (Introductory Level)#

6.6. Dependency Management and Isolation#

6.7. Documentation as Part of Design#

6.8. Iterative Design & Refactoring#

6.9. Designing for Reproducibility#

6.10. Functional vs. Object-Oriented Design#

6.11. Designing APIs and CLIs for Research Tools#

6.12. Layered Architecture in Scientific Computing Software#

6.13. Summary Checklist#

  • Follow core principles (KISS, DRY, SRP)

  • Use modular, loosely coupled design

  • Design for testability and reuse

  • Document key design decisions

  • Enable reproducibility (configs, versioning)

  • Refactor and iterate regularly

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