Abstract

The emergence of digital computers at the tail end of the last century allowed for the evolution of computer languages from low-level languages of the 1940s to the object-oriented, scripting high-level languages of today. This evolution has, in effect, seen the size and complexity of computer programs increase by a large factor. The software industry has, in response, developed different styles for designing and developing these sophisticated computer programs. While the different styles have advantages and disadvantages and different application domains, modular architecture has stood out as an overarching architecture for designing complicated and enormous software systems of today's world. In this paper, we examine how modularity applies to software architecture design, the concepts of modularity, the metrics of modularity, and current trends in software modularization. We advance the position that modularity will keep influencing software design for the foreseeable future due to the flexibility and the several advantages to the discipline of software design.

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