Re: ada-c++ productivity

[klimas@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com]

In article <1991Mar17.142756.25676@ecst.csuchico.edu>, rreid@ecst.csuchico.edu (Ralph Reid III) writes:
> In article <1991Mar16.205228.4268@grebyn.com> ted@grebyn.UUCP (Ted Holden) writes:
>> . . .
>>from the Feb. 11 issue of Federal Computer Week:
>>
>>   "The GSA Board of Contract appeals issued a ruling last month that
>>   could effect how the military evaluates the cost effectiveness of Ada
>>   software.
>>
>>   "The board upheld a decision by the Air Force to award a contract to
>>    a high-priced bidder based on a measure of productivity that equals
>>    three lines of Ada code per programmer per day.
>>
>>    "A lower priced bidder, and others in the Ada community, said this
>>    standard is much too low.  The protester in the case, DynaLantic
>>    Corp, offered an average of ten lines of code per day per
>>    programmer.
>>
>>    "Three lines of code per day is absurd [as if ten wasn't], said
>>    Ralph Crafts, editor of a newsletter on Ada, and an expert
>>    witness for the protester.....
>> . . .
> 
> 
> I don't know where these companies are digging up these kind of
> unproductive machine operators (I hesitate to call them real
> programmers), but they would never get through the computer science
> program here at Chico State.  It kind of makes me wonder what schools
> they came from, if they even have degrees.  The kind of productivity
> discussed in this article sounds like the level I might expect from
> beginning programming students at a junior college.  I would like to
> know what in this world could reduce a serious programmer's
> productivity to these levels.
        Ten lines of code per man day is quite believable in a corporate
	environment!  $50-$75/line of code is typical even in non military
	applications (e.g. Mentor Graphics C++ based RELEASE 8.0 supposedly
	has about a million lines of code and cost the company $75million.

	I believe the difference in code quality, testing, documentation
	and the usual intergalactic corporate overhead are the problems.
	On the other hand I'm not so sure I'd want shareware in a cruise
	missle either!

> 
> -- 
> Ralph.  SAAC member.
> ARS: N6BNO
> Compuserve: 72250.3521@compuserve.com
> email: rreid@cscihp.ecst.csuchico.edu