On 2 Oct 2007 07:49:49 -0700, in bit.listserv.ibm-main
(Message-ID:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Robert Fake) wrote:
More specifically, I'm looking at this from a maintenance
perspective. If I
give a programmer an existing program to modify, how long
on average will it
take, per line of code, to analyze the program to then be
able to then make
necessary changes.
I remember a problem from *many* years ago. There
was a Cobol program which was misbehaving. I was supposed
to fix it. It had been written by a consultant who was not
available.
The Procedure Division of said program was no longer
than three printed pages, maybe only two. I had samples of
the input and output. It should have been easy.
After spending over an hour trying to figure out why
this mess of spaghetti code worked, much less why it
didn't, I called over the other programmer in the
department. We spent another half hour, together, trying
to figure it out. I finally ended up rewriting the program
from its specs.
I will leave it to your ingenuity to decide how to
include this incident into your average.
--
I cannot receive mail at the address this was sent from.
To reply directly, send to ar23hur "at" intergate "dot" com
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