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What do software design students understand about information hiding? A qualitative case study

Abstract:

The Information Hiding Principle is a modularization technique aimed at increasing the productivity of software development and maintenance. The Hiding Information concept introduced by Parnas is recognized as one of the key software design principles. However, as the author said, implementing the Principle is harder than it looks. This paper aims to discover what students understand and how they implement, on their designs, the Information Hiding Principle. The research was conducted through a qualitative case study with thirteen Master's students in the domain of Software Design. Among the different concepts associated with understanding the Principle we could identify that some students adhere to the idea of dividing in order to hide, while others only care about hiding. Both of them without a successful implementation of the Principle. Few students have some idea about the Principle, however they do not get it all when implementing it. Furthermore, we can conclude that Parnas' statement remains until today.