Thank you for this Robert. I find it frustrating how people within computer science argue for the most important area being increasing programmer productivity only to shortly after start discussing subjects where the person doing the work is completely left out of the equation. I suppose it's bounded in the (mis)understanding that "true science" should look somewhat like physics and/or mathematics. So it's great to see a physics quote saying that a reasonable definition of complexity is highly subjective. I can see why it's tempting to look for solutions where the programmer is left out - it does complicate the problem considerably. However it reminds me of the old joke about the drunk looking for his keys under the lamppost (http://dushkablog.blogspot.com/2008/04/drunk-under-lamppost.html).
So it's still not clear to me what exactly you mean by trustworthiness John ... well it's actually not clear to me what you mean by complexity either, but in the context of making programmers more productive, complexity should probably be tied in with something like: a) Ability/speed of understanding b) Ability to build (maybe even describe) a conceptual model c) Ability to change the program without bugs or "surprises" d) Ability to convince oneself of the correctness of the code (e.g. who would build a testscript for "c = a + b") (c) and (d) has the advantage that it would probably be possible to construct experiments to test this and this gain a bit objectivity. One problem is of course we have no "standard programmer" to do the testing with :-) Regards Michael Arnoldus On Mar 4, 2010, at 2:02 , Robert Feldt wrote: > Hi, > > On Thu, Mar 4, 2010 at 1:00 AM, Alejandro F. Reimondo > <[email protected]> wrote: >> Complexity is not measurable in the objects (nor figures), >> because it emerges from information process. >> > Some would disagree and argue for using Kolmogorov Complexity (or some > approximation) to measure complexity of things. But you can get some > support in the concept of "Effective Complexity" from Gell-Mann and > Lloyd which first says: > > "In nontechnical language, we can define the effective complexity (EC) > of an entity as the length of a highly compressed description of its > regularities." > > IMHO, EC is particularly interesting for Software Engineers/Developers > since G-M&L make a "...distinction between regularities and those > features that are treated as random or incidental" which is similar to > Fred Brooks analysis of software in the "Silver bullet" paper > (inherent and accidental complexity). > > G-M&L then goes on to say: > > "Like some other concepts sometimes identified with complexity, the EC > of an entity is context-dependent, even subjective to a considerable > extent. It depends on the coarse graining (level of detail) at which > the entity is described, the language used to describe it, the > previous knowledge and understanding that are assumed, and, of course, > the nature of the distinction made between regularity and randomness." > > which i interpret as the effective complexity corresponding, in some > sense, to the "mental"/computing energy an entity would need to expend > to consider all the aspects of a thing/system it considers important > after disconsidering the parts which it consider irrelevant. > > Best regards, > > /Robert Feldt > -- > Tech. Dr. (PhD), Assoc. Professor (Senior Lecturer) in Software Engineering > Chalmers, Software Engineering and Technology > Blekinge Institute of Technology, Software Engineering Research Lab > robert.feldt (a) chalmers.se or robert.feldt (a) gmail.com > http://www.cse.chalmers.se/~feldt > > _______________________________________________ > fonc mailing list > [email protected] > http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
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