Words Of Code (was Re: Squeak in IEEE Software)

Doug Way dway at mat.net
Thu Feb 4 21:53:01 UTC 1999


On Thu, 4 Feb 1999, Jerome Garcia wrote:

> On  2/4/99 Doug Way wrote:
> 
> >
> Probably the closest you can come to measuring re-use is to measure the 
> amount of functionality in an app versus the amount of source code.
>     < stuff deleted > 
>      
> Code Reuse = # of Function Points / Words of Code
> 
> How's that for quantifying code reuse? :-)  I'm interested in other 
> opinions on this...
> > 
>      
>      I like it and have seen this approach taken in the past applied to 
>      relatively static code written in less dynamic languages in which 
>      functionality is developed relatively slowly. 
>      
>      However, it appears to me that Squeak is already a very dynamic 
>      development environment and will become more so in the near future. 
>      Development of functionality can proceed very rapidly and duplication 
>      should be detected on the fly if possible. Ideally, not only should it 
>      be detected on the fly but the environment and programmer should 
>      interact to ensure that the "best" version of the duplicated 
>      functionality can be folded into the system easily forming an 
>      efficient feedback loop with Squeak Central when the new version is 
>      "best". I am not yet familiar enough with Squeak to suggest whether or 
>      how such detection can be accomplished efficiently but it seems that 
>      much of the functionality for efficient feedback already exists.

I agree with pretty much everything you say... measuring code reuse as I
described above would be too time consuming to be worth doing very often,
and it wouldn't necessarily point out areas of duplicated functionality. 
It's merely a way to measure reuse, not a method to improve reuse.  (It
might be more useful as a way to compare different projects or even
different languages.) 

Tools like the Refactoring Browser are more along the lines of what is
needed to improve things dynamically.  (especially if the Refactoring
Browser could be beefed up with lesser-known factorings such as the
streamContents: example Dan gave...) 

- Doug Way
  EAI/Transom Technologies, Ann Arbor, MI
  http://www.transom.com
  dway at transom.com, dway at mat.net

  Smalltalk: Guaranteed Y10K Compliant





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