Re: Ada productivity in LOC/hour

[CONDIC@PSAVAX.PWFL.COM]

From: Marin David Condic, 407.796.8997, M/S 731-93
Subject: Re: Ada productivity in LOC/hour
Original_To:  PROFS%"SMTP@PWAGPDB"
Original_cc:  CONDIC



>
>Mike Bates <mikeb@SSD.FSI.COM> writes:
>[snip]
>My question is simple: What is the current conventional wisdom on
>typical Ada productivity expressed as source line of code per
>man-hour?  Are there any recent studies of productivity that could
>substantiate such a rule of thumb?
>[snip]
>
I can't give you a comprehensive number on this, but let me give
you the benefit of what I've got:

We build embedded control systems for jet engines, programmed in
Ada under 2167a. By counting the hours spent *strictly in the
programming group* on various projects, and by using *raw lines
of code impacted per release* as the unit of work, we seem to
have maintained a rolling average of between 20 and 55 SLOCs per
hour. This does not count labor up front doing the design work or
the labor at the back doing the integration testing and
verification. Just the labor to translate diagrams to Ada, code
read, unit test, image building, configuration managing, hacking
development tools, collecting statistics, goofing off on the job,
etc. YMMV

I can caveat this *to death* with all the usual disclaimers about
problem space, what you choose to count, tools you have at your
disposal, "is this the only measure of productivity", etc., but
I'm sure you already know this. It's at least a credible number
that I can back up with almost three years of measurement. Feel
free to contact me (see my trailer) if you want more details.

BTW: I did another study on a body of Ada code (approx 250,000
SLOCs) wherein I compared raw carriage returns, semicolons,
Halstead doohickeys, non-comment, non-blank SLOCs and modules.
The statistical correlation between each unit was *soooo close*
that I concluded that you could count whatever you want and get a
conversion factor to any of the others. My advice: Be consistent
and keep it simple. We went with raw carriage returns - easy to
compute and easy to compare against Fortran or C or whatever (for
whatever *that* worth!)

Pax Vobiscum,
Marin


Marin David Condic, Senior Computer Engineer    ATT:        407.796.8997
M/S 731-93                                      Technet:    796.8997
Pratt & Whitney, GESP                           Internet:   CONDICMA@PWFL.COM
P.O. Box 109600                                 Internet:   MDCONDIC@AOL.COM
West Palm Beach, FL 33410-9600
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