The SOLID principles explained: A beginner’s guide to writing better code

Nikhil Sukhani
3 min readDec 30, 2022
SOLID

SOLID is an acronym for five principles of object-oriented design, which were first proposed by Robert C. Martin (also known as Uncle Bob). These principles are intended to help you design software that is scalable, maintainable, and flexible. Here’s a brief overview of each of the SOLID principles:

  1. Single Responsibility Principle (SRP): The Single Responsibility Principle states that a class or module should have only one reason to change. This means that a class or module should have a single, well-defined purpose, and all its methods and fields should be related to that purpose. Adhering to the SRP can help to make your code more modular and easier to maintain, as it reduces the number of things that a class or module is responsible for.
  2. Open-Closed Principle (OCP): The Open-Closed Principle states that a class or module should be open for extension but closed for modification. This means that you should design your classes and modules in such a way that they can be extended to add new functionality, but you shouldn’t have to change their existing code to do so. Adhering to the OCP can help to make your code more flexible and easier to modify, as it encourages you to design your classes and modules in a way that allows you to add new functionality without changing their existing code.
  3. Liskov Substitution Principle (LSP): The Liskov Substitution Principle states that if a class or module is a subtype of another class or module, then it should be able to be used in the same way as the supertype without affecting the correctness of the program. This means that you should design your classes and modules in such a way that subtypes are interchangeable with their supertypes, and that any code that uses the supertype should also work with the subtype without any changes. Adhering to the LSP can help to ensure that your code is more flexible and maintainable, as it allows you to use subtypes in place of their supertypes without breaking existing code.
  4. Interface Segregation Principle (ISP): The Interface Segregation Principle states that clients should not be forced to depend on interfaces they don’t use. This means that you should design your interfaces in such a way that they are small and focused, and that they contain only the methods that are relevant to the clients that use them. Adhering to the ISP can help to make your code more modular and easier to maintain, as it reduces the number of things that a client has to depend on in order to use an interface.
  5. Dependency Inversion Principle (DIP): The Dependency Inversion Principle states that high-level modules should not depend on low-level modules, but rather both should depend on abstractions. This means that you should design your code in such a way that high-level modules depend on abstractions (such as interfaces or abstract classes) rather than on concrete implementations of low-level modules. Adhering to the DIP can help to make your code more flexible and maintainable, as it allows you to change the implementation of a low-level module without affecting the high-level modules that depend on it.

By adhering to the SOLID principles, you can design software that is more scalable, maintainable, and flexible. These principles are widely accepted as best practices in the software development industry, and they can help you write better code that is easier to read, understand, and modify.

Happy Learning, Happy Coding !!!

--

--