Modularity (programming)

Modular programming is a software design technique that emphasizes separating the functionality of a program into independent, interchangeable modules, such that each contains everything necessary to execute only one aspect of the desired functionality.

A module interface expresses the elements that are provided and required by the module. The elements defined in the interface are detectable by other modules. The implementation contains the working code that corresponds to the elements declared in the interface. Modular programming is closely related to structured programming and object-oriented programming, all having the same goal of facilitating construction of large software programs and systems by decomposition into smaller pieces, and all originating around the 1960s. While historically usage of these terms has been inconsistent, today "modular programming" refers to high-level decomposition of the code of an entire program into pieces: structured programming to the low-level code use of structured control flow, and object-oriented programming to the data use of objects, a kind of data structure.

In object-oriented programming, the use of interfaces as an architectural pattern to construct modules is known as interface-based programming.

The term assembly (as in .NET languages like C#, F# or Visual Basic .NET) or (as in Dart, Go or Java) is sometimes used instead of module . In other implementations, this is a distinct concept; in Python a package is a collection of modules, while in the upcoming Java 9 the introduction of the new module concept (a collection of packages with enhanced access control) is planned.

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