Re: Function Points

From	Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid>
Newsgroups	comp.lang.forth
Subject	Re: Function Points
References	(7 earlier) <503929e3$0$283$14726298@news.sunsite.dk> <7xfw7aipyk.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <2012Aug26.150931@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at> <7xbohvy8pc.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com> <2012Aug30.160847@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at>
Date	2012-08-30 10:43 -0700
Message-ID	<7xmx1cmg1t.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com> (permalink)
Organization	Nightsong/Fort GNOX

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anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) writes:
>> Most of my words are 1 line.
> And what benefit would a stepping debugger have in that scenario?

Eh?  It's very helpful to execute one step at a time to see where the
word is going wrong, e.g. with a conditional breakpoint in a loop (~~
can spew too much output), examining variables (not just the stack)
during execution, etc.

>>There's another aspect: how do you convince the customer (or anyone
>>else) of the absence of errors?
>Why should I?  Do customers care? 

1) Besides customers you may also have to convince your co-workers (code
review) and yourself.  It's certainly common enough (at least for me) to
write some code, test it and see that it seems to work, but be left with
doubts that my testing may have missed an obscure case.

2) Yes customers do care.  I worked on a financial product and customers
(banks) did technical audits on us several times, particularly on our
security stuff.  They asked what we did to prevent various specific
failures and we had to answer convincingly.

I'm not saying static types would have helped the above cases all that
much, but it tells me that incorporating reasoning about correctness
into programs is a sensible aspirational goal.

> Moreover, even with formal methods and whatnot there is no guaranteed
> error-free program ... because formal methods only can show that the
> code implements the specification, but not that the specification is
> correct or that the requirements are correct.

Sure, but that's mostly a red herring.  Of course it's near-impossible
to write a spec that captures ALL the desired behavior of a program.
Type systems instead let you assert the absence of specific incorrect
behaviors, which still helps a lot.  "This program must never
dereference a null pointer for any input" is simple enough to specify
and easy for a reasonable type system to ensure, but decades of C
program failures show it's very hard to supply by pure design and
testing.  Thus the saying "the last good thing written in C was
Schubert's Ninth Symphony". ;-).

> I have never implemented a balanced tree... For every potential use I
> have encountered there has been a less complex and usually more
> efficient data structure (usually a hash table).

They're useful and I keep wanting them in Python.  They let you access
(i.e. add, delete, lookup) arbitrary keys, and also traverse the keys in
order.  A real-world example where I wanted this is a priority queue
where you can update elements (think of an alarm clock with N updateable
alarms).  Databases are another frequent application (B-trees).
Balanced trees also guarantee O(log n) access and update, which stops
some real-world denial of service attacks that have happened in internet
programs, based on triggering hash collisions on purpose.  And,
persistent versions make it easy to take snapshots as updates happen,
which is handy in concurrent programs among other places.

> So, the example illustrates that Haskell's type system may help me
> with a problem that I have never encountered.  Not very convincing as
> far as real-world usage is concerned.  The example gets categorized as
> "cool, but useless".

I thought it was amazing how easy it was to write a type signature that
captured the red-black tree invariants.  I don't have a sense of how
hard it was for that guy to write the code that went with the signature.
It might have actually been too difficult for everyday programming.  It
still seems significant as an example of emerging technology not quite
ready for prime time, in addition to being cool.

Thread

Comparative Productivity of Programming Languages visualforth@rocketmail.com - 2012-08-21 21:43 -0700
  Re: Comparative Productivity of Programming Languages "A. K." <akk@nospam.org> - 2012-08-22 07:07 +0200
  Re: Comparative Productivity of Programming Languages Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2012-08-22 03:35 -0500
    Re: Comparative Productivity of Programming Languages John Passaniti <john.passaniti@gmail.com> - 2012-08-22 14:06 -0700
      Function Points (was: Comparative Productivity of Programming Languages) anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-08-23 14:50 +0000
        Re: Function Points Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-08-23 11:43 -0700
          Re: Function Points anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-08-25 14:13 +0000
            Re: Function Points Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-08-25 10:12 -0700
              Re: Function Points Doug Hoffman <glidedog@gmail.com> - 2012-08-25 15:39 -0400
                Re: Function Points Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-08-25 15:09 -0700
                Re: Function Points "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-08-25 12:34 -1000
                Re: Function Points Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-08-25 16:43 -0700
                Re: Function Points jacko <jackokring@gmail.com> - 2012-08-25 18:05 -0700
                Re: Function Points jacko <jackokring@gmail.com> - 2012-08-25 20:34 -0700
                Re: Function Points Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-08-26 03:24 +0200
                Re: Function Points Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-08-25 22:44 -0700
                Re: Function Points "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-08-25 21:19 -1000
                Re: Function Points Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-08-26 00:36 -0700
                Re: Function Points "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-08-25 21:50 -1000
                Re: Function Points Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-08-26 01:08 -0700
                Re: Function Points Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-08-26 23:20 +0200
                Re: Function Points Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-08-26 19:33 -0700
                Re: Function Points Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2012-08-27 13:34 -0500
                Re: Function Points Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-08-27 22:38 +0200
                Re: Function Points Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2012-08-28 02:45 -0500
                Re: Function Points Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-08-27 18:14 -0700
                Re: Function Points Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-08-27 18:24 -0700
                Re: Function Points anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-08-30 14:22 +0000
                Re: Function Points Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2012-08-28 03:07 -0500
                Re: Function Points Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-08-28 08:18 -0700
                Re: Function Points Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2012-08-28 12:15 -0500
                Re: Function Points Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-08-28 23:05 -0700
                Re: Function Points Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2012-08-29 03:55 -0500
                Re: Function Points Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-08-27 22:28 +0200
                Re: Function Points Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-08-27 20:26 -0700
                Re: Function Points Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-08-28 23:17 +0200
                Re: Function Points Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-08-29 01:13 -0700
                Re: Function Points Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-08-29 02:23 -0700
                Re: Function Points Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-08-30 02:59 +0200
                Re: Function Points Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-08-29 22:18 -0700
                Re: Function Points Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-08-30 20:44 +0200
                Re: Function Points Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-08-31 01:29 -0700
                Re: Function Points anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-08-31 09:33 +0000
                Re: Function Points Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-08-30 02:58 +0200
                Re: Function Points Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-08-29 19:39 -0700
                Re: Function Points anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-08-30 14:10 +0000
                Re: Function Points gavino_himself <visploveslisp@gmail.com> - 2012-08-30 20:08 -0700
                Re: Function Points "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-08-30 17:47 -1000
                Re: Function Points "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-08-27 13:43 -1000
                Re: Function Points "Paul E. Bennett" <Paul_E.Bennett@topmail.co.uk> - 2012-08-27 12:14 +0100
                Re: Function Points Mark Wills <markrobertwills@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-08-27 05:12 -0700
                Re: Function Points "Paul E. Bennett" <Paul_E.Bennett@topmail.co.uk> - 2012-08-27 15:52 +0100
                Re: Function Points anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-08-26 13:09 +0000
                Re: Function Points Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-08-27 20:52 -0700
                Re: Function Points anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-08-30 14:08 +0000
                Re: Function Points Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-08-30 10:43 -0700
                Re: Function Points "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-08-30 08:25 -1000
                Re: Function Points Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-08-30 22:42 +0200
                Re: Function Points "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnot.cmm> - 2012-08-31 01:23 -0400
                Re: Function Points Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2012-08-31 03:08 -0500
                Re: Function Points "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnot.cmm> - 2012-08-31 18:56 -0400
                Re: Function Points Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-09-01 02:35 +0200
                Re: Function Points Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-08-31 23:52 -0700
                Re: Function Points anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-09-01 14:27 +0000
                Re: Function Points anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-09-01 14:18 +0000
                Re: Function Points Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-09-01 17:45 +0200
                Re: Function Points anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-09-01 16:14 +0000
                Re: Function Points Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-09-01 19:13 +0200
                Re: Function Points Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2012-09-02 03:19 -0500
                Re: Function Points "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnot.cmm> - 2012-09-01 16:18 -0400
                Re: Function Points Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-09-02 03:04 +0200
                Re: Function Points "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnot.cmm> - 2012-09-02 04:02 -0400
                Re: Function Points Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-09-02 17:40 +0200
                Re: Function Points jim@rainbarrel.com - 2012-09-02 10:32 -0700
                Re: Function Points Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-09-02 20:49 +0200
                Re: Function Points "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnot.cmm> - 2012-09-02 16:33 -0400
                Re: Function Points "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnot.cmm> - 2012-09-02 17:03 -0400
                Re: Function Points "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-09-02 09:02 -1000
                Re: Function Points "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnot.cmm> - 2012-09-02 16:35 -0400
                Re: Function Points "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-09-02 13:42 -1000
                Re: Function Points jim@rainbarrel.com - 2012-09-02 16:54 -0700
                Re: Function Points Mark Wills <markrobertwills@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-09-03 00:29 -0700
                Re: Function Points "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnot.cmm> - 2012-09-03 01:30 -0400
                Re: Function Points "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-09-02 21:21 -1000
                Re: Function Points jim@rainbarrel.com - 2012-09-03 10:37 -0700
                Re: Function Points anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-09-04 07:14 +0000
                Re: Function Points Coos Haak <chforth@hccnet.nl> - 2012-09-03 21:12 +0200
                Re: Function Points "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnot.cmm> - 2012-09-03 17:32 -0400
                Re: Function Points "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnot.cmm> - 2012-09-03 17:51 -0400
                Re: Function Points John Passaniti <john.passaniti@gmail.com> - 2012-09-03 22:37 -0700
                Re: Function Points "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnot.cmm> - 2012-09-04 04:25 -0400
                Re: Function Points John Passaniti <john.passaniti@gmail.com> - 2012-09-04 07:35 -0700
                Re: Function Points "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnot.cmm> - 2012-09-05 02:13 -0400
                Re: Function Points "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-09-04 20:18 -1000
                Re: Function Points John Passaniti <john.passaniti@gmail.com> - 2012-09-05 10:56 -0700
                Re: Function Points "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnot.cmm> - 2012-09-05 16:11 -0400
                Re: Function Points John Passaniti <john.passaniti@gmail.com> - 2012-09-05 14:07 -0700
                Re: Function Points "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnot.cmm> - 2012-09-02 16:27 -0400
                Re: Function Points Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-09-03 00:52 +0200
                Re: Function Points Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-09-02 16:28 -0700
                Re: Function Points jim@rainbarrel.com - 2012-09-02 16:48 -0700
                Re: Function Points "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnot.cmm> - 2012-09-02 20:21 -0400
                Re: Function Points "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-09-02 14:45 -1000
                Re: Function Points "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnot.cmm> - 2012-09-03 01:12 -0400
                Re: Function Points "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-09-02 21:26 -1000
                Re: Function Points "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnot.cmm> - 2012-09-03 01:06 -0400
                Re: Function Points Mark Wills <markrobertwills@yahoo.co.uk> - 2012-08-31 03:29 -0700
                Re: Function Points anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-08-31 10:35 +0000
                Re: Function Points "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnot.cmm> - 2012-08-31 18:49 -0400
                Re: Function Points anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-09-01 14:49 +0000
                Re: Function Points "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-09-01 08:36 -1000
                Re: Function Points "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnot.cmm> - 2012-09-01 16:11 -0400
                Re: Function Points Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-09-03 01:58 +0200
                Re: Function Points Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-09-01 17:54 +0200
                Re: Function Points "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnot.cmm> - 2012-09-01 16:19 -0400
                Re: Function Points Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-09-02 03:05 +0200
                Re: Function Points Coos Haak <chforth@hccnet.nl> - 2012-08-31 23:10 +0200
                Re: Function Points "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2012-08-31 15:50 -1000
                Re: Function Points Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-09-01 10:31 -0700
                Re: Function Points Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-09-01 21:52 +0200
                Re: Function Points "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnot.cmm> - 2012-09-01 16:36 -0400
                Re: Function Points Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-09-01 14:36 -0700
                Re: Function Points Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-09-02 03:30 +0200
                Re: Function Points Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-09-02 23:15 +0200
                Re: Function Points Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-09-02 15:02 -0700
                Re: Function Points Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-09-03 01:50 +0200
                Re: Function Points jim@rainbarrel.com - 2012-09-02 16:57 -0700
                Re: Function Points Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-09-03 23:11 -0700
                Re: Function Points Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-09-04 14:30 +0200
                Re: Function Points Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-09-04 10:14 -0700
                Re: Function Points Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-09-04 22:10 +0200
                Re: Function Points Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-09-06 00:19 -0700
                Re: Function Points Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-09-06 17:48 +0200
                Re: Function Points Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-09-06 12:01 -0700
                Re: Function Points Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-09-06 22:02 +0200
                Re: Function Points Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-09-06 14:19 -0700
                Heap (was: Function Points) anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-09-07 11:30 +0000
                Re: Heap (was: Function Points) Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-09-07 18:12 +0200
                Re: Heap (was: Function Points) anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-09-07 16:48 +0000
                Re: Heap (was: Function Points) Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-09-07 21:34 +0200
                Re: Heap Gerry Jackson <gerry@jackson9000.fsnet.co.uk> - 2012-09-07 22:04 +0100
                Re: Heap anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-09-08 11:52 +0000
                Re: Heap Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-09-08 22:48 +0200
                Re: Heap (was: Function Points) anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-09-08 12:11 +0000
                priority queue (was: Function Points) anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-09-03 11:46 +0000
                Re: Function Points Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-09-03 15:03 +0200
                Re: Function Points mhx@iae.nl (Marcel Hendrix) - 2012-09-03 22:36 +0200
                Re: Function Points mhx@iae.nl (Marcel Hendrix) - 2012-09-06 20:27 +0200
                Re: Function Points Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2012-09-02 04:00 -0500
                Re: Function Points visualforth@rocketmail.com - 2012-09-03 10:40 -0700
                Re: Function Points Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2012-09-03 20:26 +0200
                Re: Function Points Doug Hoffman <glidedog@gmail.com> - 2012-08-27 11:49 -0400
                Re: Function Points Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-08-27 09:16 -0700
                Re: Function Points Josh Grams <josh@qualdan.com> - 2012-08-28 22:46 +0000
                Re: Function Points jacko <jackokring@gmail.com> - 2012-08-28 16:06 -0700
                Re: Function Points Doug Hoffman <glidedog@gmail.com> - 2012-08-28 20:50 -0400
              Re: Function Points anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-08-26 12:59 +0000
                Re: Function Points Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2012-08-26 22:24 -0700
        Re: Function Points (was: Comparative Productivity of Programming Languages) John Passaniti <john.passaniti@gmail.com> - 2012-08-23 15:02 -0700
          Re: Function Points (was: Comparative Productivity of Programming Languages) anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2012-08-25 14:57 +0000
  Re: Comparative Productivity of Programming Languages "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnot.cmm> - 2012-08-22 08:07 -0400
    Re: Comparative Productivity of Programming Languages visualforth@rocketmail.com - 2012-08-22 08:12 -0700
  Re: Comparative Productivity of Programming Languages visualforth@rocketmail.com - 2012-08-22 07:37 -0700

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