Pasta Theory

The pasta theory is a theory of programming. It is a common analogy for application development describing different programming structures as popular pasta dishes. Pasta theory highlights the shortcomings of the code. These analogies include spaghetti, lasagna and ravioli code.

The most widely used analogy for application development is spaghetti code, which shows the writing of unstructured procedures resulting in the code being difficult to understand and update.

Lasagna code is said to be a structurally written and layered program. The application is easy to read and has a layered structure. However, because of unpredictable interdependencies in segments of code, a lasagna program may be difficult to modify.

Easily modified and well written object-oriented programming (OOP) code is called ravioli code. The sauce is the layer of interfaces between different parts.

Much of programming work today is rewriting spaghetti or lasagna code into an OOP version with the same functionality. In some cases, the program is simply replaced by a brand new one.