RE: Ada The Best Language?

["Robert C. Leif, Ph.D." <rleif@rleif.com>]

From: Bob Leif
To: Marin David Condic et al.
Although I like the results of Professor McCormick's experiment, they are
clearly insufficient for making billion dollar and national security
decisions. One major problem is that, it is virtually impossible to do a
double blind experiment where neither the instructor nor the student knew
the name of the programming language that was being taught. The concept of a
placebo is also totally inappropriate for this type of study.

I suspect that the only way to compensate for the lack of these two basic
tools is to increase the study size and expense. If we had parallel classes
for the languages and selected the students at random for each language,
meaningful results could be obtained. In the case of the other languages, we
would have to find faculty members who really believed in the other
languages and had a level of enthusiasm equal to Professors McCormick,
Feldman, Dewar, etc.

One way to obtain funding for this type of study is to include gender as a
variable. If we can prove that the C class of languages are sexist, we have
got it made. I would not be surprised if this were true.

-----Original Message-----
From: comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org
[mailto:comp.lang.ada-admin@ada.eu.org]On Behalf Of Marin David Condic
Sent: Monday, July 23, 2001 6:51 AM
To: comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org
Subject: Re: Ada The Best Language?


One more time with the links because they are *really* worth reading as
possibly the *only* "controlled" experiment in software productivity. (Maybe
there are others, but this is the only one I know of where we are taling
about doing the *same* project more than once with a multitude of developers
each taking a stab at it so that it has some statistical significance and
the only variable being language.)

http://www2.dynamite.com.au/aebrain/ADACASE.HTM
http://www.stsc.hill.af.mil/crosstalk/2000/aug/mccormick.asp

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Mark Lundquist" <up.yerz@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:hhh67.385587$p33.7760908@news1.sttls1.wa.home.com...
>
> "Larry Hazel" <lhazel@mindspring.com> wrote in message
> news:3B5655F0.3442DBF1@mindspring.com...
>
> > Is Dr. McCormic the professor with the software controlling model
trains?
> If
> > so, I believe his data showed an enormous productivity increase over C
> (C++
> > ????).
>
> Yes -- he's the train guy!
> -- mark
>
>
>