Re: Software Quality in Science

[Martin <martin.dowie@btopenworld.com>]

On Feb 10, 1:13 pm, Florian Weimer <f...@deneb.enyo.de> wrote:
> * Robert A. Duff:
>
> >>...The net result of changing languages appears
> >> to be that the overall defect density appears to be about the same,
> >> (Hatton 1997). In other words, when a language corrects one
> >> deficiency, it appears to add one of its own."
>
> > That assertion requires evidence, and I don't see it here!
>
> (Hatton 1997) is here: <http://www.leshatton.org/IEEE_Soft_97b.html>
> For Ada, it cites Compton & Withrow, "Improving Productivity: Using
> Metrics to Predict and Control Defects in Ada Software", in "Second
> Annual Oregon Workshop on Software Metrics", Oregon 1990.  It then
> concludes that language choice had no impact on fault density
> patterns.  Of course, the evidence is only anecdotal.
>
> But the actual cross-language studies I've seen show that most metrics
> one can conceive (such as defect rate, performance, development time,
> even lines of code) vary as much among programmers as among
> programming languages.  This is a bit sad because it means that
> language design does not really matter as far as actual results are
> concerned.
>
> Ada subsets may be helpful if your goal is to avoid the last
> (relevant) bug.  But that requires matching development practices,
> which are in place for only very few code bases.  Certainly, these
> practices aren't magically introduced if you just substitute Ada for C
> or Fortran.

What about McCormack (http://www.stsc.hill.af.mil/crossTalk/2000/08/
mccormick.html)?

Or Zeiger (Rational) (http://www.adaic.com/whyada/ada-vs-c/
cada_art.html)?

Both quite old now (but so is Hatton's) and they at least have
something more than anecdotes...

Cheers
-- Martin