Understanding Modular Programming: Benefits and Best Practices

Why Modular Approach in Programming?

• Some programs might have thousands or millions of lines and to manage such programs it becomes quite difficult as there might be too many of syntax errors or logical errors present in the program, so to manage such type of programs concept of modular programming approached.
• Each sub-module contains something necessary to execute only one aspect of the desired functionality.
• Modular programming emphasis on breaking of large programs into small problems to increase the maintainability, readability of the code and to make the program handy to make any changes in future or to correct the errors.

Points which should be taken care of prior to modular program development:

1. Limitations of each and every module should be decided.
2. In which way a program is to be partitioned into different modules.
3. Communication among different modules of the code for proper execution of the entire program.

Advantages of Using Modular Programming Approach

Modularizing our code in a big application has a lot of benefits.

Simplification: A module often concentrates on one comparatively small area of the overall problem instead of the full task. We will have a more manageable design problem to think about if we are only concentrating on one module. Program development is now simpler and much less vulnerable to mistakes.

Ease of Use :This approach allows simplicity, as rather than focusing on the entire thousands and millions of lines code in one go we can access it in the form of modules. This allows ease in debugging the code and prone to less error.

Flexibility: Modules are frequently used to establish conceptual separations between various problem areas. It is less likely that changes to one module would influence other portions of the program if modules are constructed in a fashion that reduces interconnectedness. (We might even be capable of editing a module despite being familiar with the program beyond it.) It increases the likelihood that a group of numerous developers will be able to collaborate on a big project.

Reusability: Functions created in a particular module may be readily accessed by different sections of the assignment (through a suitably established api). As a result, duplicate code is no longer necessary.

Scope: Modules often declare a distinct namespace to prevent identifier clashes in various parts of a program.

Ease of Maintenance : It helps in less collision at the time of working on modules, helping a team to work with proper collaboration while working on a large application.

In Python, modularization of the code is encouraged through the use of functions, modules, and packages.

How can we implement modular programming in C?

Each function defined in C by default is globally accessible. This can be done by including the header file in which implementation of the function is defined.

How to implement?

Suppose, we want to declare a Stack data type and at the same time want to hide the implementation, including its data structure, from users. We can do this by first defining a public file called stack.h which contains generic data Stack data type and the functions which are supported by the stack data type.
In the header file we must include only the definitions of constants, structures, variables and functions with the name of the module, that makes easy to identify source of definition in a larger program with many modules.
Keywords externand static help in the implementation of modularity in C.

What are Modules in Python?

A document with definitions of functions and various statements written in Python is called a Python module.

In Python, we can define a module in one of 3 ways:

• Python itself allows for the creation of modules.
• Similar to the re (regular expression) module, a module can be primarily written in C programming language and then dynamically inserted at run-time.
• A built-in module, such as the itertools module, is inherently included in the interpreter.

A module is a file containing Python code, definitions of functions, statements, or classes. An example_module.py file is a module we will create and whose name is example_module.

We employ modules to divide complicated programs into smaller, more understandable pieces. Modules also allow for the reuse of code.

Rather than duplicating their definitions into several applications, we may define our most frequently used functions in a separate module and then import the complete module.