On 2010-07-09, at 12:56 AM, Colin Putney wrote: > On 2010-07-08, at 9:21 PM, Steve Dekorte wrote: > >> Thanks for the response. That kind of sounds like the goal is fewer lines of >> code (and presumably less labor) per unit of function (increasing >> productivity). Is that correct? > > Well, I don't speak for Alan, but I have to think it's a bit more than that. > The biggest problem we have in computing is that we're terrible at it. Just > the other day I remarked to a colleague that the system we were working on > had about 10x too much code for what it did, and he agreed. So yes, less code > for the same functionality might (might!) be higher productivity, but it's > also a rough measure of quality. Writers seek economy of words, athletes seek > economy of motion, we seek economy of code.
I agree that labor including maintenance (which may include understandability, extendability, etc) is a better end measure but that code length (or maybe keystrokes, etc) can be a reasonable starting point for measuring it. Btw, this discussion may sound trivial, but consider the question: "Is computing technique X is better than Y?" We need to know by what measure it's "better" for the question to be meaningful. And without a measure that matches one's goals, decisions made on their basis may be counterproductive. _______________________________________________ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
