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Re: Return of the Applets?

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On 4/6/2015 7:25 PM, Martin Gregorie wrote:
> On Mon, 06 Apr 2015 17:44:48 -0400, Jerry Stuckle wrote:
> 
>> LOC has been used as a measurement standard for the 47+ years I've been
>> programming.  You may not think it's a good measurement, but the experts
>> in the field pretty much all agree on it.
>>
> LOC counting is a useful measurement within a project or within a single-
> language shop, but I don't think its at all useful for making 
> measurements between languages except in limited cases.
>

Maybe - but it is still the metric used historically.

> Its probably meaningful for comparing programming productivity between 
> block-structured languages because by and large they tend to have similar 
> sized statements and the statements have similar capabilities. But, once 
> you start comparing radically different languages, it no longer makes 
> sense to use LOC counting: the better 4GLs (Sculptor, NCC Filetab, 
> Cognos, PowerBuilder, Xbase) can do a huge amount with very little code 
> and so can be written very quickly while a COBOL program of less than 
> 1000 lines would be little more than a warm-up exercise in most of the 
> shops I've worked in. Every other language, except maybe assemblers, fit 
> somewhere in between these extremes.
> 

To a certain extent, yes.  But OTOH, a lot of the advantages and
disadvantages of individual languages tend to balance out.

> Another problem with LOC measurements is that they usually ignore 
> comments. Now, that may be OK in COBOL programs provided the local 
> standards require meaningful data names and procedure division section 
> and paragraph names because its hard to write anything that anywhere near 
> as incomprehensible as a C-spell even if you use ALTER statements, but 
> other languages (assembler, C, RPG) can easily become impenetrable 
> without comments, and some are hard to follow almost by design (APL, 
> Forth). I remmeber reading that Ken Iverson once wrote a screen editor in 
> 26 lines of APL but was unable to amend it himself six months later: no 
> comments of course, or it wouldn't have come anywhere close to fitting on 
> a screen. 
> 

Which has nothing to do with LOC measurements.  And while APL has some
advantages in some statements (i.e. mathematical constructs), it has
disadvantages in others (i.e. file operations).

> Bottom line: a good programmer uses clear, well thought out comments 
> throughout his code and sensible programming groups require it as part of 
> their work packages because they know it will make changes easier. But 
> nonetheless comments are ignored by almost all LOC statistics gathering 
> tools. IMO this devalues the use of LOC counting for anything except 
> estimating new projects and even there its results tend not to be valid 
> outside a particular organisation and programming environment.
> 

Which is true for all languages and has nothing to do with which
language is more popular.

-- 
==================
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry Stuckle
jstucklex@attglobal.net
==================

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Re: Return of the Applets? Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2015-04-05 09:46 -0400
  Re: Return of the Applets? Jeff Higgins <jeff@invalid.invalid> - 2015-04-05 13:12 -0400
  Re: Return of the Applets? Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2015-04-05 15:14 -0400
    Re: Return of the Applets? Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2015-04-05 16:41 -0400
      Re: Return of the Applets? Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2015-04-05 16:54 -0400
        Re: Return of the Applets? Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2015-04-05 17:08 -0400
          Re: Return of the Applets? Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2015-04-05 17:17 -0400
            Re: Return of the Applets? Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2015-04-05 17:30 -0400
              Re: Return of the Applets? Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2015-04-05 17:42 -0400
                Re: Return of the Applets? Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2015-04-05 17:52 -0400
                Re: Return of the Applets? Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2015-04-05 18:17 -0400
                Re: Return of the Applets? Luuk <luuk@invalid.lan> - 2015-04-06 11:26 +0200
    Re: Return of the Applets? Joshua Cranmer 🐧 <Pidgeot18@verizon.invalid> - 2015-04-06 13:23 -0500
      Re: Return of the Applets? Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2015-04-06 15:09 -0400
        Re: Return of the Applets? Joshua Cranmer 🐧 <Pidgeot18@verizon.invalid> - 2015-04-06 17:33 -0500
          Re: Return of the Applets? Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2015-04-06 17:44 -0400
            Re: Return of the Applets? Joshua Cranmer 🐧 <Pidgeot18@verizon.invalid> - 2015-04-06 19:10 -0500
              Re: Return of the Applets? Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2015-04-06 20:03 -0400
                Re: Return of the Applets? Joshua Cranmer 🐧 <Pidgeot18@verizon.invalid> - 2015-04-06 21:36 -0500
                Re: Return of the Applets? Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2015-04-07 09:11 -0400
            Re: Return of the Applets? Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid> - 2015-04-06 23:25 +0000
              Re: Return of the Applets? Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2015-04-06 19:59 -0400
                Re: Return of the Applets? Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid> - 2015-04-07 13:29 +0000
                Re: Return of the Applets? Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2015-04-07 10:45 -0400
                Re: Return of the Applets? Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid> - 2015-04-07 15:51 +0000
                Re: Return of the Applets? Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2015-04-07 13:16 -0400
                Re: Return of the Applets? Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid> - 2015-04-07 20:22 +0000
                Re: Return of the Applets? Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2015-04-07 17:03 -0400
                Re: Return of the Applets? Leif Roar Moldskred <leifm@huldreskog.localdomain> - 2015-04-07 11:34 -0500
                Re: Return of the Applets? Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2015-04-07 13:18 -0400
                Re: Return of the Applets? Leif Roar Moldskred <leifm@huldreskog.localdomain> - 2015-04-07 12:40 -0500
                Re: Return of the Applets? Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2015-04-07 17:06 -0400
                Re: Return of the Applets? Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid> - 2015-04-07 20:28 +0000
                Re: Return of the Applets? Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2015-04-07 17:11 -0400
                Re: Return of the Applets? Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid> - 2015-04-07 23:00 +0000
                Re: Return of the Applets? Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2015-04-07 19:25 -0400
  Re: Return of the Applets? Joshua Cranmer 🐧 <Pidgeot18@verizon.invalid> - 2015-04-06 13:09 -0500

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