Re: Clause "with and use"

[Marin David Condic <nobody@noplace.com>]

There's an article in the Nov 03 issue of Communications of the ACM 
called "Measuring Productivity In The Software Industry" Among other 
things it talks about "Understandibility" and the energy lost in trying 
to decrypt algorithms coded to minimize the number of keystrokes used to 
write them. The authors think that "economy of expression" is 
counter-productive. (Although, like most articles on productivity, they 
don't have any data to back it up.)

Its an interesting article, although I find it problematic that they 
(like others) make the comparison between software productivity and 
microprocessor chip speed. (Basically that microprocessors keep doubling 
in speed every so many months and yet software productivity seems to 
even be slowing down.) I find this comparison totally unreasonable 
because the two things are entirely qualitatively different. What does 
the speed at which one tool *runs* have to do with the time it takes to 
design another tool? Because Dodge came out with the Viper - which can 
run double the speed of the Neon - that should make their engineers 
design carbeurators at twice the speed?

It *might* be fair to compare the *Design Time* of a microprocessor to 
the *Design Time* of a software system - but even there, I find a 
qualitative difference. In electronics, a designer can develop circuitry 
for some function and use it like a brick - put a few million of them 
into the chip. He gets credit for a million whozits units on the chip 
but really only *designed* one of them. A software engineer designs a 
blivet and then moves on to design the next blivet. Does he get credit 
for the million times the first blivet gets called in some loop 
somewhere? No - he gets credit for designing two blivets. The two things 
just can't be counted the same way.

Anyway, its an interesting article and I liked the criticism of "terse" 
programming as being counter-productive.

MDC



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Marin David Condic
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     "So if I understand 'The Matrix Reloaded' correctly, the Matrix is
     basically a Microsoft operating system - it runs for a while and
     then crashes and reboots. By design, no less. Neo is just a
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         --  Marin D. Condic
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