Re: objectada for GREAT programs ? - SLOC phys vs logical?

[dweller@dfw.net (David Weller)]

In article <551f60$rig@flood.weeg.uiowa.edu>,
Robert S. White <WhiteR@CRPL.Cedar-Rapids.lib.IA.US> wrote:
>In article <kmradke-2610961017440001@dip24.inav.net>, kmradke@inav.net says...
>...snip...
>>I suppose confusion of terminology.  My lines of code does NOT count
>>comments, and this code is HEAVILY commented.  The actual lines of
>>code counting comments is at least double the original amount.
>
>  Come on!  This seems like a perfect troll to get into a long thread
>about physical SLOC (ugh!) versus logical SLOC (yah!) software metic
>data collection/effort estimating.  Sigh...it seems that the OFFICIAL
>channels have dictated that physical SLOC be used.  When I and most of my
>co-workers estimate a software task, a mental image of the amount of
>logical SLOC comes to mind.  Now if we only had a HUGE database of 
>physical SLOC metrics for EXACTLY similar tasks to drawn on...
>
>  But SEI/CMM practices will make this better eventually...hope...hope...

Just don't hope it's done the NASA way.  On the Space Station program,
they've managed to micromanage the definition of SLOC into about 20
different definitions, each one sensitive to the exact context in a
given time (meaning you can call it one thing if you're a programmer,
and another thing if you're an accountant).

It's an absolute nightmare when you get into the realm of using SLOCs
as a cost-estimation method (and if you decide to follow up this
thread, PLEASE post to comp.software-eng).  

Of course, using physical lines, IMHO, gives a very good
rough-order-of-magnitude feel for what you'll be dealing with.  In any
case, you must still understand the project development rules (do you
have to wade through 20 pages of comments embedded by the trusty CM
system that explains exactly who touched it?), the writing pattern of
the author (do they follow common style?  Is their background more
likely to yield Fortran-looking code? etc), and the given complexity
of the module (a real time scheduler, or a 3-d coordinate conversion
system, mayhave a higher complexity density than, say, a program that
declares edit fields for string processing).

Of course, it would also appear I'm going to be guilty of perpetuating
this thread in an inappropriate newsgroup :-)

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