Re: quantifying bloat

From	"Chris Uppal" <chris.uppal@metagnostic.REMOVE-THIS.org>
Newsgroups	comp.programming
References	<12217875.401.1335542191031.JavaMail.geo-discussion-forums@ynjj38>
Subject	Re: quantifying bloat
Date	2012-04-29 10:03 +0100
Message-ID	<W5udnasYne_KmQDSnZ2dnUVZ7q2dnZ2d@bt.com> (permalink)

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bob wrote:

> Has anyone ever tried to apply information theory to source code to
> quantitatively determine if code is bloated or not?

tar -cf - $codebase | gzip -v > /dev/null

;-)

More seriously (though the above certanly isn't entirely silly), it depends on 
what you mean by "bloat".  Wordy/verbose language design?  Verbose API's ? 
Copy-paste redundancy ?  Missing abstractions[*] ? Excess features ?  Dead code 
left unpruned ?  ...

Some of those could be attacked, I think, with information theory.

But note that the closer you get to some kind of infomation theoretic ideal, 
with no "wasted" bandwidth, the nearer you get to the situation where any error 
in transmission results in a /different/, but /still valid/ message.  Not 
something that I'd like in a programming environment.

    -- chris

[*] abstraction can be thought of as a compression technique.

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quantifying bloat bob <bob@coolfone.comze.com> - 2012-04-27 08:56 -0700
  Re: quantifying bloat hopcode <hopcode@invalid.de> - 2012-04-27 18:16 +0200
    Re: quantifying bloat Nomen Nescio <nobody@dizum.com> - 2012-04-29 16:22 +0200
  Re: quantifying bloat "Chris Uppal" <chris.uppal@metagnostic.REMOVE-THIS.org> - 2012-04-29 10:03 +0100
    Re: quantifying bloat "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2012-04-29 11:36 +0200
      Re: quantifying bloat Daniel Pitts <newsgroup.nospam@virtualinfinity.net> - 2012-04-29 15:09 -0700
        Re: quantifying bloat "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2012-04-30 10:09 +0200
      Re: quantifying bloat "Chris Uppal" <chris.uppal@metagnostic.REMOVE-THIS.org> - 2012-05-01 08:53 +0100
        Re: quantifying bloat "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2012-05-01 10:52 +0200
          Re: quantifying bloat hopcode <hopcode@invalid.de> - 2012-05-02 04:02 +0200
          Re: quantifying bloat "Chris Uppal" <chris.uppal@metagnostic.REMOVE-THIS.org> - 2012-05-05 10:03 +0100
            Re: quantifying bloat "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2012-05-05 12:50 +0200
              Re: quantifying bloat hopcode <hopcode@invalid.de> - 2012-05-05 16:23 +0200
                Re: quantifying bloat "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2012-05-05 17:43 +0200
      Re: quantifying bloat gremnebulin <peterdjones@yahoo.com> - 2012-05-03 09:27 -0700
        Re: quantifying bloat "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2012-05-03 18:50 +0200
          Re: quantifying bloat Willem <willem@toad.stack.nl> - 2012-05-04 13:52 +0000
            Re: quantifying bloat "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2012-05-04 16:05 +0200
              Re: quantifying bloat hopcode <hopcode@invalid.de> - 2012-05-04 20:44 +0200
                Re: quantifying bloat Willem <willem@toad.stack.nl> - 2012-05-04 20:32 +0000
                Re: quantifying bloat "Chris Uppal" <chris.uppal@metagnostic.REMOVE-THIS.org> - 2012-05-05 10:16 +0100
    Re: quantifying bloat James Dow Allen <jdallen2000@yahoo.com> - 2012-05-02 02:44 -0700
      Re: quantifying bloat "Chris Uppal" <chris.uppal@metagnostic.REMOVE-THIS.org> - 2012-05-05 10:11 +0100
        Re: quantifying bloat "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2012-05-05 13:22 +0200
          Re: quantifying bloat hopcode <hopcode@invalid.de> - 2012-05-05 16:27 +0200
  Re: quantifying bloat rossum <rossum48@coldmail.com> - 2012-04-29 11:01 +0100

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