Composition is the act of combining parts or elements to form a whole, like a symphony of code that creates a beautiful, functional application. It's a fundamental concept in software engineering that allows developers to build complex systems from smaller, reusable components, much like how a skilled chef creates a gourmet meal from simple ingredients.

How to use it in a sentence

• "I need to refactor this monolithic codebase and use composition to break it down into microservices," grumbled the senior engineer, dreading the task ahead but knowing it was necessary for the company's transition to a cloud-native architecture.

• The tech lead, exasperated by the junior developer's tightly coupled code, exclaimed, "Have you never heard of composition? It's like the holy grail of software design patterns, allowing us to create modular, maintainable systems that don't make us want to pull our hair out!"

If you actually want to learn more...

• Symmetric Composition: Paul Graham explores the concept of creating balanced and harmonious designs, highlighting the universal appeal and applicability of symmetry in composition across various disciplines.

• Aggregation And Composition: Martin Fowler dives into the nuanced differences between aggregation and composition in UML, emphasizing the importance of clear semantics and the potential pitfalls of using aggregation without proper definition.

• Composition Compliance: This article discusses how composition compliance can be achieved in a DevOps culture by combining pre-compliant components, drawing parallels to the distributive property in mathematics.

Note: the Developer Dictionary is in Beta. Please direct feedback to skye@statsig.com.