Modern C++
Programming
23. Software Design I [DRAFT]
Basic Concepts
Federico Busato
2024-03-29
Books 1/3
Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile
Software Craftsmanship
Robert C. Martin, 2008
Clean Architecture
Robert C. Martin, 2017
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Books 2/3
Large-Scale C++ Volume I: Process and
Architecture
J. Lakos, 2021
C++ Software Design
K. Iglberger, 2022
6/37
Abstraction, Interface, Module, and Class Invariant
An abstraction is the process of generalizing relevant information and behavior
(semantics) from concrete details
An interface is a communication point that allows iterations between users and the
system. It aims to standardize and simplify the use of programs
A module is a software component that provides a specific functionality. Common
examples are classes, files, and libraries
“In modular programming, each module provides an abstraction in form
of its interface”
– John Ousterhout, A Philosophy of Software Design
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Quotes
“Most modules have more users than developers, so it is better for the
developers to suffer than the users... it is more important for a module to
have a simple interface than a simple implementation”
– John Ousterhout, A Philosophy of Software Design
“The key to designing abstractions is to understand what is important,
and to look for designs that minimize the amount of information that is
important”
– John Ousterhout, A Philosophy of Software Design
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Class Invariant
A class invariant (or type invariant) is a property of an object which remains
unchanged after operations or transformations. In other words, a set of conditions that
hold throughout its life. A class invariant constrains the object state and describes its
behavior
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Separation of Concern 1/2
“Separation of concern” suggests to organize software in modules, each of which
address a separate “concern” or functionality
Benefits of a modular design includes
• Decrease cognitive load. Small consistent parts are easier to understand than the whole
system in its entirety
• Help code maintainability. Fewer or no dependencies allow to focus on smaller pieces of
code, isolate potential bugs, and minimize the impact of changes
• Independent development
Modular design can be achieved both with vertical and horizontal organization, i.e.
layers of abstractions or functionalities at the same level
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Separation of Concern 2/2
“The most fundamental problem in computer science is problem decom-
position: how to take a complex problem and divide it up into pieces that can
be solved independently”
– John Ousterhout, A Philosophy of Software Design
“We want to design components that are self-contained: independent, and
with a single, well-defined purpose”
– Andy Hunt, The Pragmatic Programmer
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Low Coupling, High Cohesion
Cohesion refers to the degree to which the elements inside a module belong together.
In other words, the code that changes together, stays together.
See also the Single Responsibility Principle
Coupling refers to the degree of interdependence between software modules. In other
words, how a modification in one module affects changes in other modules
The Low Coupling, High Cohesion principle suggests to minimize dependencies and
keep together code that is part of the same functionality
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Encapsulation and Information Hiding
Encapsulation refers to grouping together related data and methods that operate on
the data. It allows to present a consistent interface that is independent of its internal
implementation
Encapsulation is usually associated with the concept of information hiding that
prevents
• Exposing implementation details
• Violating class invariant maintained by the methods
It also provides freedom for the internal implementations
Encapsulation and information hiding are common paradigms to achieve software
modularity
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Code reuse
“Code reuse is the Holy Grail of Software Engineering”
– Douglas Crockford, Developer of the JavaScript language
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Technical Debt
“Technical debt is most often caused not so much be developers taking
shortcuts, but rather by management who pushes velocity over quality, features
over simplicity”
– Grady Booch, UML/Design Pattern
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Member Functions vs. Free Functions
“If you’re writing a function that can be implemented as either a member
or as a non-friend non-member, you should prefer to implement it as a non-
member function. That decision increases class encapsulation. When you think
encapsulation, you should think non-member functions”
– Scott Meyers, Effective C++
• https://workat.tech/machine-coding/tutorial/
design-good-functions-classes-clean-code-86h68awn9c7q
• Prefer nonmember, nonfriends?
• Monoliths "Unstrung",
• How Non-Member Functions Improve Encapsulation
• C++ Core Guidelines - C.4: Make a function a member only if it needs direct
access to the representation of a class
• Functions Want To Be Free, David Stone, CppNow15
• Free your functions!, Klaus Iglberger, Meeting C++ 2017
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Member Functions
Functions that must be member (C++ standard):
• Constructors, destructor, e.g. A() , ∼A()
• Assignment operators, e.g. operator=(const A&)
• Subscript operators, operator[]()
• Arrow operators, operator->()
• Conversion operators, operator B()
• Function call operator, operator()
• Virtual functions, virtual f()
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Member Functions
Functions strongly suggested being member:
• Unary operators because they don’t interact with other entities
- Member access operators: dereferencing *a , address-of &a
- Increment, decrement operators: a++ --a
• Any method that preserves
- const correctness, e.g. pointer access
- object initialization state, e.g. a variable that cannot be changed externally after
initialization (invariant)
Functions suggested being member:
• In general, compound operators are expressed by updating private data members
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Non-Member Functions
Functions that must be non-member (C++ standard):
• Stream extraction and insertion << , >>
Functions that are strongly suggested being non-member:
• Binary operators to maintain symmetry, see ”Implicit conversion and overloading”
• Template functions within a class template
Otherwise, it requires an additional template keyword when calling the function
(see dependent typename) → verbose, error-prone
Effective C++ item 24: Declare Non-member Functions When Type Conversions Should
Apply to All Parameters
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Non-Member Functions
More in general, member functions should be used only to preserve the invariant
properties of a class and cannot be efficiency implemented in terms of other
public methods
All other functions are suggested to be free-functions
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Why Prefer Non-Member Functions
Encapsulation: Non-member functions guarantee to preserve the class invariant as
they can only call public methods, protecting the class state by definition.
Non-member functions helps to keep the class smaller and simpler → easier to
maintain and safer
Member functions induce coupling forcing the dependency from the this pointer.
Member functions can be split or organized in several other functions, worsening the
problem. Such methods are forced to perform actions that are only specific to such
class. On the contrary, non-member function favor generic code and can be potentially
reused across the program
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Why Prefer Non-Member Functions
Cohesion/Single Responsibility Principle Member functions can perform actions
that are not strictly required by the class, bloating its semantics
Open-Close Principle Non-member functions improve the flexibility and extensibility
of classes by extending its functionality but without
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BLAS GEMM
GEneralized Matrix-Matrix product API provided by Basic Linear Algebra Subroutine
standard is one of the most used function in scientific computing and artifical
intelligence
The API is defined in C as follow: C = αop(A) ∗ op(B) + βC
ErrorEnum sgemm(int m, int n, int k,
OperationEnum opA,
OperationEnum opB,
float alpha,
float* a,
int lda,
float* b,
int ldb,
float beta,
float* c,
int ldc);
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BLAS GEMM - Comprehension Problems
• m , n , k describe the shapes of A , B , C in a non-intuitive way. Except
domain-expert, users prefer providing the number of rows and columns as matrix
properties, not GEMM problem properties
• Privatization of the return channel for providing errors
• Errors expressed with enumerators. Need additional API to get a description of
the error meaning
• Domain-specific cryptic name. e.g. zgemm : generalized matrix-matrix
multiplication with double-precision complex type
• The data type on which the function operates is encoded in the name
itself zgemm → any new combination of data types requires a new name.
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BLAS GEMM - Flexibility Problems 1/3
• A , B , C matrices could have different types
• The compute type, namely the type of intermediate operations, could be different
from the matrices. This is also known as mixed-precision computation
• Batched computation, namely having multiple input/output matrices, is not
supported
• The API is state-less → preprocessing steps for optimization or additional
properties (e.g. different algorithms) cannot be expressed
• Matrix sizes can be greater than int (2
31
− 1), specially on distributed systems
• Even if we perform computations with relative small matrices, the strides, e.g.
row * lda could be larger than int (2
31
− 1)
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BLAS GEMM - Flexibility Problems 2/3
• alpha/beta could have a different type from matrix types
• alpha/beta are typically pointers on accelerators (e.g. GPU) to allow
asynchronous computation
• The underline memory layout is implicit (column-major). Row-major and other
layouts are not supported
• C is both input and output. It is more flexible to decouple C and add another
parameter for the output D
• Doesn’t have an execution policy which describes where (host, device) and how
(sequential, parallel, vectorized, etc.)
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BLAS GEMM - Flexibility Problems 3/3
• Doesn’t have a memory resource which provides a mechanism to manage internal
memory
• Memory alignment is known only at run-time
• It is not possible to optimize the execution with compile-time matrix sizes
Most of all these points have been addressed by the std::linalg proposal
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Objects vs. View
Object
An object is a representation of a concrete entity as a value in memory
Resource-owning object
Resource-owning object refers to RAII paradigm which ties resources to object
lifetime
example: std::vector , std::string
View
A view acts as a non-owning reference and does not manage the storage that it refers to.
Lifetime management is up to the user
example: std::span , std::mdspan , std::string view
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Objects vs. View
• lack ownership
• short-lived
• generally appear only in function parameters
• generally cannot be stored in data structures
• generally cannot be returned safely from functions (no ownership semantics)
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Reference Semantic 1/3
Technical Debt: engineering cost: more coupled, more rigid, fragile (multiple
references)
Spooky action: different references see an implicitly shared object. Modification to a
reference affects the other ones
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Reference Semantic 2/3
Incidental algorithms: emerges from a composition of locally defined behaviors and
with no explicit encoding in the program. References are connection between dynamic
objects
Visibility broken invariant: a modification to a reference can have a chain of actions
that reflects to the original object, breaking the visibility of an action
Race conditions: spooky action between different threads
Values - Safety, Regularity, Independence, and the Future of
Programming, Dave Abrahams, CppCon22
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Reference Semantic 3/3
Surprise mutation: invisible coupling introduced by involuntary dependencies
void offset(int& x, const int& delta) { x += delta;}
int a = 3;
offset(a, a); // x=6, delta=6
offset(a, a); // x=12, delta=12
Unsafe operations mutation: A safe operation cannot cause undefined behavior
int a = 3;
int b& = a;
a = b++;
see also, strict aliasing violation
Property Models: From Incidental Algorithms to Reusable Components, Jarvi et al,
GPCE’08
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Value Semantic 3/3
Regularity: x = x; x == y → y == x; x == copy(x); x = y ⇐⇒ x = copy(x)
regular data type properties: copying, equality, hashing, comparison, assignment,
serialization, differentiation
composition of value type is a value type
Independence: local and thread-safe
value semantic in C++
• pass-by-value gives callee an independent value
• a return value is independent in the caller
• a rvalue is independent
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