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=-0.4 required=5.0 tests=AC_FROM_MANY_DOTS,BAYES_00 autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,d89b08801f2aacae X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2002-04-30 19:23:13 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!skynet.be!skynet.be!kibo.news.demon.net!demon!shale.ftech.net!news.ftech.net!diablo.theplanet.net!diablo.theplanet.net!psiuk-p2!psiuk-p3!uknet!psiuk-n!news.pace.co.uk!nh.pace.co.uk!not-for-mail From: "Marin David Condic" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Is strong typing worth the cost? Date: Tue, 30 Apr 2002 11:39:12 -0400 Organization: Posted on a server owned by Pace Micro Technology plc Message-ID: References: <4519e058.0204290722.2189008@posting.google.com> <3CCE8523.6F2E721C@earthlink.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: dhcp-200-133.miami.pace.co.uk X-Trace: nh.pace.co.uk 1020181153 11511 136.170.200.133 (30 Apr 2002 15:39:13 GMT) X-Complaints-To: newsmaster@news.cam.pace.co.uk NNTP-Posting-Date: 30 Apr 2002 15:39:13 GMT X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4522.1200 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4522.1200 Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:23310 Date: 2002-04-30T15:39:13+00:00 List-Id: This is a legitimate question to ask. There are lots of theories and reasoning about theories that tend to give one cause to believe that strong typing (and other aspects of Ada) lead to lower costs and higher reliability. However, that's different than some emperical evidence that in the real world you actually *do* get the benefit claimed by the theories. There can be lots of factors in the real world that tend to mess up the theories. Example: Automotive research indicates that antilock breaking systems ought to reduce accidents. Yet there have been some recent studies of accident statistics that would seem to indicate that cars equipped with ABS actually end up in *more* accidents than other cars. Why is that? The engineers will have to puzzle over it for a while to see if they can explain the phenomenon. The bad news is that there is a real dearth of any empirical evidence to support most of the claims made by theoreticians and practitioners in software engineering. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence - but that gets weak. (Think of the last time some politician parades some pathetic, suffering family out in front of the news cameras to justify why he wants to pass some bill & spend some truckload of (our) money "to help these poor, suffering people..." Does finding one single case where a program might be of benefit justify the whole program?) There have been some studies here and there, but not necessarily in the areas of interest and certainly not consistently enough to really make the conclusions "scientific". There have even been some economic studies at Harvard that indicate that computerization does not benefit a company. Dollars in to purchase PC's, etc., for a company do not necessarily translate into dollars out in profits. The good news is that Ada seems to have more empirical evidence of productivity/error improvements than most other languages. Maybe we Ada fans are just more "scientific" than most? :-) I had in-house data indicating Ada improved things over other languages and there are other studies that seem to support that conclusion out there on the net. (McCormick & Rational being the two most frequently referenced.) But those are at a gross level of "Ada vs Something Else" so you can't really claim it proves that strong typing itself is a good thing. My study looked at error rates and found a huge decrease there. Review of the errors indicated that a large percentage of them were due to numerical scaling errors and such that went away with Ada's support for representation of numbers & strong typing. (The representation of fixed point numbers and the use of well defined floating point numbers and the ability of the compiler to do the conversion work for you were all major factors in eliminating errors.) A reduction of errors translates into increased productivity as well since you aren't spending time patching things. The problem is that this was just in one domain where the numeric problems are a really big deal & wouldn't necessarily reflect the rest of the world. (That, and the study was completely internal so I can't give you references you can cite. :-) It would be interesting to see if any of the academic types out there with an interest in Ada could come up with some experiments or studies that could provide some solid evidence for Ada's claims to doing it "better". MDC -- Marin David Condic Senior Software Engineer Pace Micro Technology Americas www.pacemicro.com Enabling the digital revolution e-Mail: marin.condic@pacemicro.com "dmjones" wrote in message news:Xns9200929868B11derekknosofcouk@62.253.162.107... > > Why am I asking for this evidence? I am working on a detailed > analysis of C that includes material on coding guidelines. > I have set myself the target of basis these guidelines on > empirical evidence. I am a fan of strong typing. However, > unless I can find any evidence to the contrary, the most I > can say at the moment is "some people think ...". >