Re: software metrics

[brbarkstrom@gmail.com]

> 
> 
> Thank you all,
> 	Patrizia
> 
> 

You might take a look at Barry Boehm's books on Software Cost Estimation
[the classic is Software Engineering Economics, 1981; the newer version
is Software Cost Estimation with COCOMO II, 2000].  The competitor is
Capers-Jones with his Function Point Analysis.  He was big on metrics
that would demonstrate his approach was better than anybody else's.  
You might find McConnell, S., 1996: Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software 
Schedules, Microsoft Press of some help.  You might also take a look at the 
work Harlan Mills did (either Google or try Amazon to get a book list).

Metrics that relate to the number of errors are probably useful.  There is
some work on that for Ada versus other languages, but I don't have a specific
reference.  You might try `software error rate' or similar phrases on Google. 

As far as I can tell, software metrics has become a rather passé topic.
OTOH, the GNAT GPS tool computes a relatively large number of metrics.
I haven't experimented with languages other than Ada, but I occasionally
track my own programming by running the metrics to get SLOC and number of lines
per unit.  There are others, such as cyclometric complexity and related
measures, but I'm not doing really big projects right now.

Bruce B.