CS101 Introduction to Computing

Lecture 24
Design Heuristics

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 During the last lecture …
• We became familiar with the various phases
of the process that developers follow to
develop SW systems of reasonable
complexity

• We looked at a couple of problems related to

the Waterfall SW development model

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In order to understand
anything, you must not
try to understand
everything
Aristotle

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 1
efficiency 
universality

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focus!
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 Today’s Lecture
Heuristics for System Architecting

• We will try to understand the role of

heuristics in architectural (or high-level)
design

• We will become familiar with a few popular

design heuristics

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Heuristic?
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 Heuristic

Rule of thumb learned through trial & error

Common sense lesson drawn from experience

Qualitative principle, guideline, general judgement

Natural language description of experience

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 ?
Heuristic

Wisdom 9
Caution! Caution!
Heuristics don’t always
lead to the best results

At times they even lead to the

wrong ones, but mostly to
results that are good-enough
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system?
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 System

A collection of elements which

working together
produces a result not achieved by the things alone

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 System
Architecture?
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 System Architecture

The structure
(in terms of components, connections, constraints)

of a product or a process
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 ?
Design == Architecture

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Heuristics for system architecting

Rules and lessons learnt by system architects

after long experiences

which when followed
result in sound, stable, practical systems

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My favorite system architecting
(and other relevant) heuristics

--- in no particular order ---

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18
Given many parts of a system to be designed/built,

do the hard part 1st

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 #3
All the serious
mistakes are made
on the very first day
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 #4
Simplify,
simplify,
simplify!
Probably the most useful heuristics for increasing
reliability while decreasing cost & time-to-build
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Caution!
Everything should be as
simple as possible
but not simpler

Al Einstein22
 #5
If you can’t explain it
in 5 minutes, either
you don’t understand
it or it does not work
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 #6
A system will develop &
evolve much more rapidly if
there are stable intermediate
forms than if there are not

Build iteratively; add features gradually

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 #7
Success is defined by
the user, not the builder

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Customer
is always
right?26
 It depends!
#8
It’s more important to know what the customer
needs instead of what he says he wants

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 #9
If you think that your
design is perfect, it is only
because you have not
shown to anyone else

--- Get your designs reviewed ---

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 # 10

A good solution
to a problem
somehow looks
nice & elegant
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#11 In partitioning, choose
the chunks so that they are
as independent as possible

Chunks should have low external

complexity & high internal complexity

Organize personal tasks to minimize the

time individuals face interfacing 30
 5
1 3

6
2
4

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1 3

6
2
4

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1 3

6
2
4

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 4 8
1
2

7 9
3

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 #12
Partition/repartition
the problem until a
model consisting of
7±2 chunks
emerges
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 Life is the art of drawing
sufficient conclusions
from insufficient premises

Samuel Butler

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#13 When choices must be made
with unavoidably inadequate info:

Choose the best available

& then watch to see:
whether further solutions appear
faster than future problems
If so, the choice was at least adequate
If not, go back & choose again 37
 #14 The Triage
1. Let the dying die
2. Ignore who’ll recover on their own
3. Treat only those who’ll die without your help
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# 15
Don’t just remove
the defect; ...

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# 15
Don’t just remove
the defect; correct
the process that
caused it
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#16 The number of defects
remaining in a system after
a given level of tests is
proportional to ...

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#16 The number of defects
remaining in a system after
a given level of tests is
proportional to the number
found during the test

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 #17 Programmers deliver
the same number of
LOC/day regardless of the
language they are writing in

Use the highest-level language

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 There are many more!

Please post any that are familiar

to you on the message board

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 In Today’s Lecture

• We became familiar with the the role of

heuristics in design

• We also discussed a few well-known design

heuristics for architectural design

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 Next Lecture:
Web Design for Usability

• To become able to appreciate the role of

usability in Web design

• To become able to identify some of the

factors affecting the usability of a Web page

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