GRASP stands for General Responsibility Assignment Software Patterns. It is a set of principles applied to Object Oriented Programming.
There are nine principles or “patterns” which help programmers understand the responsibilities in software design. In10se on Medium writes a detailed summary on each principle in the article, Mastering GRASP Design Principles for Better Software Design.
- Information Expert
- Creator
- Controller
- Low Coupling
- High Cohesion
- Indirection
- Polymorphism
- Pure Fabrication
- Protected Variations
When developing code, programmers need to identify where to assign responsibility in the code. In software design, responsibility refers to two things: behavior (doing) and data (knowing). Different parts of the code have the responsibility or obligation to “do” the thing itself, such as creating an object or modifying the data.
Programmers can also assign responsibility to the data used by the code such as when the data is public or private, or when to relate data objects for reference, or how the data can be used to generate dependent data.
To keep this post within the acceptable length, I will cover the first four principles this week.
- Information expert: this principle states that “responsibility should be assigned to the class with the most knowledge or information required to fulfill the responsibility” (In10se).
For example, a professor object that has access to every student’s homework and test scores should be responsible for calculating each student’s final grade since this object has access to all the necessary data to do it. - Low Coupling: there should be as little dependencies as possible to reduce the effects of changes in the data and code so to keep different systems separate from each other.
Instead of having one object be dependent on another, it would be better to create a separate interface that connects the two. - High Cohesion: groups that have related responsibilities should be simplified to a single class for better clarity and maintainability. This also means keeping things that have no related responsibilities separate.
- Controller: this principle says that all system events should be handled through a single class that manages and coordinates the system behavior. In10se gives the example of a UserController class that is dedicated to handling user-related events like registering and logging in. However, the actual processes are in other classes.
While writing code is certainly difficult, I find designing the code the hardest part. Just as being fluent in a language doesn’t make me an excellent author, so too does knowing a programming language well not necessarily mean that I can write software that is efficient and effective.
Designing software requires a strong understanding of how to assign responsibility in the code. GRASP contains principles that help guide a programmer’s decision making when designing the software structure so to write a program that not only works, but is also secure and maintainable.
Source: https://medium.com/@in10se/mastering-grasp-design-principles-for-better-software-design-a21b5ec29e89
From the blog Stories by Namson Nguyen on Medium by Namson Nguyen and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.