Coupling and cohesion

Question

I\'m trying to boil down the concepts of coupling and cohesion to a concise definition. Can someone give me a short and understandable explanation (shorter than the definiti

Answer 1

One of the best comprehensive discussions of software design concepts related to OO (including these ones) is Bertrand Meyer's Object Oriented Software Construction.

Regarding 'coupling', he gives his Weak Coupling / Small Interfaces rule as follows:

If two modules communicate, they should exchange as little information as possible.

Meyer's material related to cohesion isn't ever boiled down to a single pithy statement, but I think this sentence from Steve McConnell's Code Complete sums it up pretty well:

Cohesion refers to how closely all the routines in a class or all the code in a routine support a central purpose