What You See Is What It Does: A Structural Pattern for Legible Software

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new structural pattern for software that enhances legibility and modularity by using independent services, event-based rules, and a domain-specific language, facilitating better incremental development and transparency.

Contribution

It proposes a novel structural pattern with concepts and synchronizations, including a domain-specific language, to improve software legibility and modularity, especially for LLM-assisted coding.

Findings

Improved software legibility and modularity.

Enhanced incremental development and transparency.

Effective case study on RealWorld benchmark.

Abstract

The opportunities offered by LLM coders (and their current limitations) demand a reevaluation of how software is structured. Software today is often "illegible" - lacking a direct correspondence between code and observed behavior - and insufficiently modular, leading to a failure of three key requirements of robust coding: incrementality (the ability to deliver small increments by making localized changes), integrity (avoiding breaking prior increments) and transparency (making clear what has changed at build time, and what actions have happened at runtime). A new structural pattern offers improved legibility and modularity. Its elements are concepts and synchronizations: fully independent services and event-based rules that mediate between them. A domain-specific language for synchronizations allows behavioral features to be expressed in a granular and declarative way (and thus readily generated by an LLM). A case study of the RealWorld benchmark is used to illustrate and evaluate the approach.