From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,60e2922351e0e780 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-11-02 05:03:06 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news2.google.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!elnk-pas-nf1!newsfeed.earthlink.net!stamper.news.pas.earthlink.net!stamper.news.atl.earthlink.net!newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net.POSTED!d9c68f36!not-for-mail Message-ID: <3FA50083.10709@noplace.com> From: Marin David Condic User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020823 Netscape/7.0 (OEM-HPQ-PRS1C03) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Clause "with and use" References: <3FA2CDCB.500F4AF0@fakeaddress.nil> <3FA3B412.AF3BEB96@fakeaddress.nil> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Sun, 02 Nov 2003 13:03:06 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.165.24.156 X-Complaints-To: abuse@earthlink.net X-Trace: newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net 1067778186 209.165.24.156 (Sun, 02 Nov 2003 08:03:06 EST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 02 Nov 2003 08:03:06 EST Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:1919 Date: 2003-11-02T13:03:06+00:00 List-Id: 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 Preben Randhol wrote: > > Shortcuts are customisable. > -- ====================================================================== Marin David Condic I work for: http://www.belcan.com/ My project is: http://www.jsf.mil/NSFrames.htm Send Replies To: m o d c @ a m o g c n i c . r "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 memory leak that's too hard to fix, so they left him in... The users don't complain because they're packed in slush and kept sedated" -- Marin D. Condic ======================================================================