Re: Productivity metrics

2004-04-15 Thread Bob Dubery

- Original Message -
From: Bruce Nichol [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: U2 Users Discussion List [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2004 8:18 AM
Subject: Re: Productivity metrics



 Back in the days of yore, we calculated similar jobs at an overall rate
 of 2/5ths VM (Pick in those days) involvement to
 normal  (then-)mainstream COBOL  4GL development.   (I use the quotes
 advisedly!   g).

Which'd put MV Basic at at about 35 LOC/FP.

Interestingly that's not far off the score I arrived at by gut feel.

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Re: Productivity metrics

2004-04-15 Thread Bruce Nichol
Goo'day, Bob,

You want to feel my gut?

That's extra! ~8^))

At 16:36 15/04/04, you wrote:


- Original Message -
From: Bruce Nichol [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: U2 Users Discussion List [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2004 8:18 AM
Subject: Re: Productivity metrics


 Back in the days of yore, we calculated similar jobs at an overall rate
 of 2/5ths VM (Pick in those days) involvement to
 normal  (then-)mainstream COBOL  4GL development.   (I use the quotes
 advisedly!   g).
Which'd put MV Basic at at about 35 LOC/FP.

Interestingly that's not far off the score I arrived at by gut feel.

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Regards,

Bruce Nichol
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ALBURYNSW 2640
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Tel: +61 (0)411149636
Fax: +61 (0)260232119
If it ain't broke, fix it till it is! 

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RE: Productivity metrics

2004-04-15 Thread Hona, David S

Ah, yes...one of those reguar ...let's go around in circles and chase our
tails debates...again! ;-)

It must be Friday!

Regards,
David


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Behalf Of Bob Dubery
Sent: Thursday, April 15, 2004 3:43 PM
To: U2 Users Discussion List
Subject: Re: Productivity metrics



 It is complex topic and more than a bit off-topic for this forum...also a
 very very dry subject. *Yawn* ;-)
I'm not wanting to discuss the actual metric. We're having the regular
debate about should we keep going with UV and if not what should we
consider. One of the strengths of MV platforms has always been that they
allow programmers to develop quickly. I'm hoping to be able to quantify that
rather than give management the benefit of a gut feel.
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RE: Productivity metrics

2004-04-15 Thread Ross Ferris
Do the metrics take the impact of tools into account ? Some of the examples I've 
looked at seem to include all lines of code produced from an environment like Delphi 
or VB, even though 80% of this code is produced from the IDE.

I'm sure the same would be true of tools like SB+, and certainly with our Viságe 
product, though in both cases this would be offset to a degree by the effort involved 
in smartening up dictionaries

Many of the things that historically required hard code can now be reduced to 
parameter settings for an object - how do you measure this ? Or the flow through 
effect of changing an output conversion from, say, D2/ to D4/, in an active dictionary 
environment.

The productivity impact is obvious - but how do you quantify that sort of gain ? 
especially when it may be tempered by the fact that other parts of an 
organization/system may still be using old fashioned, hand crafted PickBasic ?

(I don't really want/need an answer to this, as I think the results could be skewed 
to show anything, and the time taken to gain the result/insight could be longer than 
the time taken to get the job done ?!?)

Ross Ferris
Stamina Software
Visage - an Evolution in Software Development


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Lee Leitner
Sent: Thursday, 15 April 2004 11:14 PM
To: U2 Users Discussion List
Subject: Re: Productivity metrics

Sounds about right IMO.

On Thu, 15 Apr 2004, Bob Dubery wrote:

 Which'd put MV Basic at at about 35 LOC/FP.

 Interestingly that's not far off the score I arrived at by gut feel.

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Productivity metrics

2004-04-14 Thread Bob Dubery
Hi all,

IBM initiated a metric called Function Points that attempts to provide a
means for measuring programming tools by the amount of code that has to be
written in order to produce a program of a certain complexity.

There have been several studies by which programming languages have been
ranked in terms of lines of code (LOC) per function point (FP)

Smalltalk, for example, is reckoned to have a ratio of 20 LOC per FP. Java
and C++ come in around the 50 mark.

Is anybody aware of studies that have applied this kind of scoring to the
BASIC used in MV databases, or any other study that seeks to rank
programming languages in terms of programmer producivity and that includes
MV BASIC?

Thanks

Bob

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Re: Productivity metrics

2004-04-14 Thread Lee Leitner
I've worked with the function point methods for some time and I don't
think MV BASIC has been mapped. You could check with Dave Garmus, who is
a central figure in FP (Google him, he comes up near the front).

In order to do it you need to run some statistics against a number of
carefully selected projects that have application function point counts
and their source code. That hopefully will average out all the
implementation variations.

The other thing to do is try to interpolate using existing, measured
langauges.  Indeed it might be fair to say MV BASIC is more COBOL-like in
productivity than traditional Dartmouth BASIC. Both have known LOC/FP
ratios. A more careful assessment of where our BASIC lies relative to
other languages would probably come up with a reasonably close ratio
value.

Lee

On Wed, 14 Apr 2004, Bob Dubery wrote:

 Hi all,

 IBM initiated a metric called Function Points that attempts to provide a
 means for measuring programming tools by the amount of code that has to be
 written in order to produce a program of a certain complexity.

 There have been several studies by which programming languages have been
 ranked in terms of lines of code (LOC) per function point (FP)

 Smalltalk, for example, is reckoned to have a ratio of 20 LOC per FP. Java
 and C++ come in around the 50 mark.

 Is anybody aware of studies that have applied this kind of scoring to the
 BASIC used in MV databases, or any other study that seeks to rank
 programming languages in terms of programmer producivity and that includes
 MV BASIC?

 Thanks

 Bob

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The world can only be grasped by action, not by
contemplation. The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.
  -- Jacob Bronowski V.13.0
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Re: Productivity metrics

2004-04-14 Thread FFT2001
In a message dated 4/14/2004 6:36:10 AM Pacific Daylight Time, 
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:


 I've worked with the function point methods for some time and I don't
 think MV BASIC has been mapped. You could check with Dave Garmus, who is
 a central figure in FP (Google him, he comes up near the front).

http://www.ifpug.org

Will Johnson
Fast Forward
Santa Cruz Surf City
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Re: Productivity metrics

2004-04-14 Thread Dubery

- Original Message - 
From: Lee Leitner [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: U2 Users Discussion List [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, April 14, 2004 3:34 PM
Subject: Re: Productivity metrics



 The other thing to do is try to interpolate using existing, measured
 langauges.  Indeed it might be fair to say MV BASIC is more COBOL-like in
 productivity than traditional Dartmouth BASIC. Both have known LOC/FP
 ratios.

MV BASIC has got to have more whipuptitude than COBOL. For a start there's
no need for the data division.

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RE: Productivity metrics

2004-04-14 Thread Ross Ferris
The other interesting thing I noted @ the HELLO WORLD site was that we had FULL source 
code for things like delphi - even though 99.9% was produced automatically from the 
IDE !

Ross Ferris
Stamina Software
Visage  an Evolution in Software Development


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Brian Leach
Sent: Wednesday, 14 April 2004 11:25 PM
To: 'U2 Users Discussion List'
Subject: RE: Productivity metrics

Ok I see.
Meaningless then.
You can write some pretty hairy nested stuff into a single 'C' statement.
How is that counted?
If you call a library function, do you count all the lines in that
function?
If you execute a SQL command under TSQL, how much of the SQL library is
included in the tally?

It's like those old programming competitions - write the shortest program
in
any computer language that prints itself, and so forth (before anyone pipes
up, my entry: pg $0)

I used a class generator a while back to generate VB classes to access a
data source. The classes are horrible, complicated, long winded things -
but
since they were machine generated and provide just about every method I
might need my productivity was actually improved by using them.

A uvCase screen is built using a screen designer or from a short script.
But
the screen interpreter includes thousands of lines of Delphi code. Again,
which is counted?

As a measure it all sounds a bit pointless - I can't see how number of
statements relates to programmer productivity when there are so many
different ways to pare a moggie.

Brian

-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Bob Dubery
Sent: 14 April 2004 12:59
To: U2 Users Discussion List
Subject: Re: Productivity metrics


- Original Message -
From: Brian Leach [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: 'U2 Users Discussion List' [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, April 14, 2004 1:55 PM
Subject: RE: Productivity metrics


 By 'lines of code' I wonder what they mean?

 Lines of source code? Number of Actions? Source or executable statements?
I've seen it expressed as lines of source code or as statements

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Re: Productivity metrics

2004-04-14 Thread Mark Johnson
Oh boy, I can smell the debates regarding programming styles in lieu of
reducing lines of code. Could this be where GOTO's have their day.
my 1 cent.
- Original Message -
From: Bob Dubery [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, April 14, 2004 7:24 AM
Subject: Productivity metrics


 Hi all,

 IBM initiated a metric called Function Points that attempts to provide a
 means for measuring programming tools by the amount of code that has to be
 written in order to produce a program of a certain complexity.

 There have been several studies by which programming languages have been
 ranked in terms of lines of code (LOC) per function point (FP)

 Smalltalk, for example, is reckoned to have a ratio of 20 LOC per FP. Java
 and C++ come in around the 50 mark.

 Is anybody aware of studies that have applied this kind of scoring to the
 BASIC used in MV databases, or any other study that seeks to rank
 programming languages in terms of programmer producivity and that includes
 MV BASIC?

 Thanks

 Bob

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Re: Productivity metrics

2004-04-14 Thread Clif Oliver
In the words from Hitchhiker's Guide, Oh, no. Not again.

On Apr 14, 2004, at 19:42, Mark Johnson wrote:

reducing lines of code. Could this be where GOTO's have their day.
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Re: Productivity metrics

2004-04-14 Thread Bob Dubery

 It is complex topic and more than a bit off-topic for this forum...also a
 very very dry subject. *Yawn* ;-)
I'm not wanting to discuss the actual metric. We're having the regular
debate about should we keep going with UV and if not what should we
consider. One of the strengths of MV platforms has always been that they
allow programmers to develop quickly. I'm hoping to be able to quantify that
rather than give management the benefit of a gut feel.

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