Scale-free geometry in OO programs

Abstract

The graphs formed by the OO programs written in a variety of languages, which show that they turn out to be scale-free networks, are described. This geometry of real programs may help to optimize language runtime systems, improve the design of future of OO languages, and reexamine modern approaches to software design. The way to detect a scale-free phenomenon is to see if it shows up statistically in the form of a power law. The primary aim of OO analysis is to model the real world in terms of communicating objects. It is found that distributions of incoming and outgoing references in object graphs follow a power law.