How are the conceptual pairs Abstract/Concrete, Generic/Specific, and Complex/Simple related to one another in software architecture?
- by tjb1982
(= 2 (+ 1 1))
take the above. The requirement of the '=' predicate is that its arguments be comparable. Any two structures are comparable in this case, and so the contract/requirement is pretty generic. The '+' predicate requires that its arguments be numbers. That's more specific.
(socket domain type protocol)
the arguments here are much more specific (even though the arguments are still just numbers and the function itself returns a file descriptor, which is itself an int), but the arguments are more abstract, and the implementation is built up from other functions whose abstractions are less abstract, which are themselves built from less and less abstract abstractions. To the point where the requirements are something like move from one location to another, observe whether the switch at that location is on or off, turn the switch on or off, or leave it the same, etc.
But are functions also less and less complex the less abstract they are? And is there a relationship between the number and range of arguments of a function and the complexity of its implementation, as you go from more abstract to less abstract, and vice versa?
(= 2 (+ 1 1) 2r10)
the '=' predicate is more generic than the '+' predicate, and thus could be more complex in its implementation. The '+' predicate's contract is less generic, and so could be less complex in its implementation. Is this even a little correct? What about the 'socket' function? Each of those arguments is a number of some kind. What they represent, though, is something more elaborate. It also returns a number (just like the others do), which is also a representation of something conceptually much more elaborate than a number.
To boil it down, I'm asking if there is a relationship between the following dimensions, and why:
Abstract/Concrete
Complex/Simple
Generic/Specific
And more specifically, do different configurations of these dimensions have a specific, measurable impact on the number and range of the arguments (i.e., the contract) of a function?
