Applying a revised RFC metric to redesign an OO design

In recent years computer engineers have achieved major breakthroughs in the technology of processors and memory. Those breakthroughs directly influenced the software technology, which in turn, produced the "Visual Age" and its associated OO languages (e.g. Visual C++ and Java). Although these languages produce nifty graphical user interface applications, they are not as easy to program in as we are led to believe. Many programmers don't have a firm grip on the concepts of OO programming. In addition, programmers become hasty and immediately start programming without regard to the design that was originally made. Moreover, the original design itself can be part of the problem. Many designs do not conform to rigorous design testing methodologies to prove their soundness. In this paper, we introduce a revised Response For a Class design metric. This metric, among many others, is crucial to help designers produce a virtually bug-free program. The RFC metric measures the potential communication between a class and other classes. We show that the RFC design metric is a viable tool to measure the coupling between objects in an object-oriented design. We provide examples to show whether a design needs to be redesigned or left as it was originally made. Moreover, we show that the RFC design metric helps developers reduce the cost, increase the quality, and decrease the time spent on maintenance of their code.