Thomas,

>Forget program complexity. Program understanding would be a better target.

I am beginning to think that program understanding does not exist.
A program is a knowledge base that people learn.  Complex ones are harder
to learn about than simpler ones, hence my interest in reducing complexity.

>Where 'understanding' might mean extracting 'programming plans' - though
>ideally it should mean building a proper situation model, and so on.

Programming plans?  Do such things actually exist outside of ppig research?
Gigerenzer's simple heuristics, or Simons bounded rationality seem much
closer to how software is written, to me.  I have great difficulty 
believing that
any planned to write most of the software I see.  Plugging together fragments
of knowledge/patterns/ideas/templates yes.

Has anybody done any research that shows that programming plans are
not just an artifact created by researchers asking programmers what their
plan was?

derek

--
Derek M Jones                                            tel: +44 (0) 1252 
520 667
Knowledge Software Ltd                            mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Applications Standards Conformance Testing   http://www.knosof.co.uk



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