Making software extensible is essential for creating a development platform or software of high quality. Good and SOLID software allows others to extend it without changing a lot of files and introducing regression bugs. It’s about allowing multiple developers to work on a sigle project simultaneasly without much merge conflicts. Here are some ways to achieve extensibility.
Modular Design
Organize your software into modules or components that encapsulate specific functionalities. This allows developers to add or replace modules without affecting the rest of the system.
- There are the SOLID principles.
- This is about not mixing software layers – User Interface with Data Access with business logic.
- This is about thinking in Design Patterns and programming language features to minimize code duplication.
Micro Services
Micro Services allow features of a software to be independent and exposed to other features via HTTP or Messaging Platforms. Different Modules could even be written in different programming languages.
Plugin System
Implement a plugin architecture that allows developers to create and integrate their custom plugins into the main application. Plugins can extend functionality without altering the core codebase. This is what the Integrated Development Platforms offer.
APIs (Application Programming Interfaces)
Provide well-defined APIs that allow developers to interact with your software programmatically. Clear and comprehensive APIs enable developers to extend your platform’s capabilities in a controlled and standardized way. The cloud providers expose their functionalities mostly this way with some authentication – so they could monetize the users.
Event System
Implement an event-driven architecture where components can raise and listen to events. Developers can then register their event listeners to extend the behavior of the system when specific events occur. Events from the underlying Android Systems for example – are implemented by plugging a listener by name and type – to be recieved by your app.
Hooks and Callbacks
Introduce hooks or callback mechanisms at strategic points in your code. Developers can register their functions to be called at these hooks, allowing them to modify or augment the application’s behavior. Great Example of hooks are the Git actions that have allowed major big Source Managing platforms to glue in Building pipelines.
Configuration Files
Use configuration files that developers can modify to customize various aspects of the software’s behavior. This allows for easy tweaking and extension without modifying the core code. These are use for example in Spring Framework – to set different parameters for different environments.
Dependency Injection
Apply dependency injection principles to allow developers to inject their custom implementations of certain components or services. This way, they can override default behaviors and extend functionality. DI also makes extremely easy to make tests for functionalities and layers
Customizable User Interface
Design your user interface (UI) in a way that allows developers to add new UI elements or modify existing ones. This way, they can customize the user experience without diving deep into the codebase. The example here is again – the IDE plugins. You could define new menu items, new editors and custom editor actions.
Dynamic Loading
Enable dynamic loading of modules or libraries during runtime. This way, developers can create separate components and load them as needed, avoiding the need to recompile the entire application. The Java IDEs use such feature – OSGI. Oracle, later made something similar – with the API in Java Module System.
Server vs Client Code
With Server Code – with a simple deploy you deliver your software to all user that access it instantaneously. This is not the case with many types of client-side code.
A Progressive Web App – caches JavaScript, Css and HTML so it could show or at least something to work – when there is no Internet Connection. If you want the client to get a new version of the code – you need to parametrisize the URLs that download the resources. Another Big Advantage of the Server Side Code is Search Engine Optimization. Not sure how faster are the modern JavaScript Engines and Web Assembly, but – back in the days Twitter made a research that showed that – server generated HTML is faster.
Mobile & Desktop Apps – have cached in the client-side the current version of the software. If you want a new version – you must trigger an update. New services like Code Push arise because of this tendency of the software world to go client side. It is like:
- make an innovation (The Client Code)
- that introduces a problem
- and make an innovation to fix that problem
It is like going around in circle.
Documentation and Tutorials
Provide comprehensive documentation and tutorials that guide developers on how to extend your software. Include clear examples and best practices to make the process easier and less error-prone. Good onboarding is as important as the product itself.
By incorporating these techniques into your software design, you can create a flexible and extensible platform that encourages innovation and contributions from external developers.