Play 20K expressions again, Sam

["Paul Byrley" <byrley@ntsc-rd.navy.mil>]

I was willing to be prejudiced again against "those academics" when
I first read about the supposed bug in a compiler that balked at 20k
expressions.  After reading Sam Harbaugh's good natured
commentary, I rethought my position and decided to just comment.

About 1985, I asked the net at SIMTEL20 what to do about
contractually limiting the size of Ada packages. We had been using
FORTRAN and MIL-STD-1679 or 1644 where the limit was 200 LOC
for a sub-program (1679 and 1644 predated Ada by 5 to 10 years). 
 I thought 200 LOC was excessive for good life cycle support
(assuming 50% comments and 64 lines per line printer page you got
6 pages of code plus a page or two of declaratives).  We had just
started talking about the Hrair limit then, thanks to Grady Booch (and,
I think, some rabbit in Watership Downs) and six pages of listings was
too much for my brain to encompass.  I felt sure, however, that the
200 LOC limit we used for FORTRAN subroutines wouldn't translate
into a valid Ada limit.  Anyhow, when I asked the net, I got back
about eight comments, all saying "no LOC limits for Ada packages". 
I believe that Grady Booch and Ed Berard were among the
commenters and that was support enough for me.  

Since then, our agency has used the no LOC limit approach on
probably 50 procurements for real time training systems, ranging in
size from 5000 LOC to 800K LOC of Ada.  I think only one vendor
has violated what, as near as I can tell, is industry agreement on good
practice on package size.  Most packages seem to be from 100 to
500 LOC, and almost never over 1000 LOC.  The one "violator of
good practice" insisted on delivering a 10K LOC package.  It worked,
but is going to be more expensive for all us taxpayers to support for
the next 10 to 15 years.  

My opinion is that if a person is hanging together large amounts of
code and will support it himself forever (promises not to quit or die
before his employer ceases to need the software), then 20K
expressions is ok. (Does one expression = one LOC or are we talking
one expression = LOC/4 to LOC/8?)  If a taxpayer (even a federal
research grant comes from taxpayers) is going to have to pay extra for
the indulgence of a 20K expression programmer, then I thank Verdix
for their choice. Actually I wish it were lower.  I remember, years ago,
learning that the reason my latest FORTRAN "gem" was not compiling
was that I had overrun the compiler tables- that program was about
1000 LOC and I was briefly indignant also.  Yeah Sam, that was half
a box of cards, red ones and blue ones and even green ones, with a
diagonal magic marker across the top so you could maybe recover
when someone dropped them.

Regards to all, even the long package advocates.

Paul Byrley

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