Re: McCabe package for Ada?

[sgi!fido.asd.sgi.com!dblues!jackr@ames.arc.nasa.gov (John Jack Repenning]

In article <C78rKq.57z@oakhill.sps.mot.com>, alanw@williams.sps.mot.com writes:

> Mark asks a REALLY good question:  just what the $%^&* is McCabe's
> number useful for?  I've found the following uses:
> ...
> 2.  Candidates for rewrites

Careful with that approach: if it's recently written, or if it's
causing problems, you might want to rewrite it.  But if it ain't
presently broke, no _way_ do you want to fix this one: you probably
haven't a *clue* what it really does, or how.

I've encountered (in a former job) high cyclomatic modules with an
established history of more-or-less working, where we decided the best
approach was to wall the thing off and avoid looking at it - even to
the extent of some fairly complex head-standing to work around its
idiosyncracies.  We took that course, because our first reaction was
to rewrite it, and that was an utter disaster (thank heaven for
version control!).


Jack Repenning		      M/S 1-875	     jackr@wpd.sgi.com
Silicon Graphics, Inc.	       x3-3027      Off:(415) 390-3027
Visual Magic Division			    Fax:(415) 390-6056