Squeak in IEEE Software
Peter Crowther
pjc at datatec.co.uk
Tue Feb 2 08:30:09 UTC 1999
[Dan Ingalls]
> However it is simple to state the ideal: every fundamental relationship
> or process should only be described in one place. To the extent that
> something appears in N places, there are N times as many chances to get it
> wrong one way or another.
>
.... including debugging. N copies of code means N different times finding
the same bug, as you *always* forget to update your other versions. It's
one of my pet peeves about strongly typed languages such as C++; even with
templates, there are times when you have to write subtly different versions
of the same code to handle different derived classes. And I'm not going to
say *anything* about Visual Basic, as I'd like to keep my Microsoft
certifications...
> The lines of code thing is just plain confusing. Generally less is
> better, and I just don't think you cn compare systems this way.
>
Unfortunately, people *do* compare systems this way and will continue to do
so until at least twenty years after a better method of comparison is
described. I last looked at the O-O metrics world three or four years ago,
and there was no real agreement on what 'good' metrics were for O-O code.
Does anyone know whether there's any more agreement? How do you measure
'progress' in projects written in O-O languages? How does a non-technical
manager know whether his/her developers are on target?
- Peter
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