Complexity

Q: How deeply does Data-Oriented Programming: Reduce software complexity cover complexity?

Distinguishes understandability from resource usage and traces complexity to mutable objects, mixed code and data, serialization, and hierarchies.

As explained in Data-Oriented Programming: Reduce software complexity

The degree to which a software system is hard to understand, rather than the computational resources it consumes.

Complexity means how hard a software system is to understand, not how many computational resources it consumes. It is relative: comparing two systems can reveal which is simpler. section 1.2 section 1.3

Traditional object-oriented designs can increase complexity when they:

Mix code and data, causing classes to participate in many relationships. section 1.2
Keep objects mutable, making behavior harder to predict and requiring synchronization in multithreaded environments. section 1.3
Lock data into objects and behavior into classes, complicating serialization and class hierarchies. section 1.2

Table 1.1 Aspects of OOP and their impact on system complexity (view table figure)

Aspect	Impact on complexity
Code and data are mixed.	Classes tend to be involved in many relations.
Objects are mutable.	Extra thinking is needed when reading code.
Objects are mutable.	Explicit synchronization is required on multi-threaded environments.
Data is locked in objects.	Data serialization is not trivial.
Code is locked in classes.	Class hierarchies are complex.

Compare common object-oriented design choices with their effects on understanding, synchronization, serialization, and hierarchy complexity. section 1.2

How Data-Oriented Programming: Reduce software complexity covers it

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Also explained in

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Architecture Modernization: Socio-technical alignment of software, strategy, and structureSystem complexity is the degree to which a software system's components, integrations, data, and behaviors interact in difficult-to-understand ways.
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Bootstrapping Microservices, Second Edition: With Docker, Kubernetes, GitHub Actions, and TerraformThe difficulty of understanding, changing, operating, scaling, and coordinating the components and interactions of a software system.
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Sutskever's ListModel complexity is the structural and parametric richness of a model that determines the range of functions it can represent.
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Effective Conversational AIThe degree of structural difficulty in a conversational task or interaction, determined by the number, interdependence, length, branching, or sequencing of steps.
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Machine Learning System DesignThe degree of structural or parametric richness in a machine learning model that determines the range of functions it can represent.
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React in DepthSoftware complexity is the degree to which a software system has many interacting elements, conditions, and behaviors that make it harder to understand and maintain.
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"Looks Good to Me"The degree to which a code structure has numerous or intricate elements and relationships that make it harder to understand or change.
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Practices of the Python ProA complexity measurement is a quantitative assessment of the structural or computational complexity of software or an algorithm.
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The Art of CodeSoftware complexity is the degree of difficulty involved in understanding, changing, and maintaining a software system.
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Experimentation for EngineersThe property of a system or procedure arising from many interacting components and making its behavior difficult to predict or execute reliably.
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Kafka for ArchitectsOperational complexity is the difficulty of provisioning, configuring, securing, monitoring, maintaining, and recovering a system in production.
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Grokking SimplicityA measure of the difficulty of understanding or analyzing a piece of software based on its structure or behavior.

Compare how 13 books explain complexity →

Related concepts

cyclomatic complexitymeasured by · Cyclomatic complexity is a software metric that measures the number of linearly independent execution paths through a program's control-flow graph.
refactoringaddressed by · Refactoring is the restructuring of existing software or code to change its internal organization and improve its design, typically while preserving externally observable behavior.
design patternaddressed by · A design pattern is a reusable, general solution structure for a recurring software design problem in a particular context.
simplicitycontrasts with · Simplicity is the quality of minimizing unnecessary complexity while preserving a system’s intended purpose and making it easier to understand.
essential complexityincludes · Essential complexity is the unavoidable difficulty inherent in a problem’s domain, rules, and required outcomes, which cannot be removed without sacrificing necessary behavior.
abstractioncontrasts with · Abstraction is a simplified representation that exposes relevant properties or behavior while omitting lower-level details unnecessary for a given purpose.

This explainer was generated by Manning's knowledge graph from the text of Data-Oriented Programming: Reduce software complexity. The section links point to the parts of the book it draws on.