Incremental change in object-oriented programming

Abstract

Incremental change adds new functionality and new properties to software. We concentrate on IC in the context of object-oriented Java programs and study selected IC activities. Because change requests are formulated in terms of program concepts - chunks of knowledge about the program and application domain - the resulting IC activities also focus on program concepts. Moreover, most change requests originate from the end user, so the end user's view of the program is the source of most concepts that govern IC. Additional concepts might originate from other programmers and deal with the program architecture or algorithms. Program dependencies also play a crucial role in IC; if a program component changes, other dependent components might also have to change. This is true even for well-designed object-oriented programs, as our example demonstrates.