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From: bright@Data-IO.COM (Walter Bright)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: C++ Not Ready for Commercial Use
Message-ID: <2176@dataio.Data-IO.COM>
Date: 23 Oct 89 17:37:09 GMT
References: <24.UUL1.3#913@acw.UUCP> <2169@dataio.Data-IO.COM> <11859@fluke.COM>
Reply-To: bright@dataio.Data-IO.COM (Walter Bright)
Organization: Data I/O Corporation; Redmond, WA
Lines: 27

In article <11859@fluke.COM> mce@tc.fluke.COM (Brian McElhinney) writes:
>In article <2169@dataio.Data-IO.COM> bright@dataio.Data-IO.COM (Walter Bright) writes:
<<Prog Anal:	I always thought that most software metric analysis progs
<<		were pretty worthless.
<Have you ever looked at the "McCabe Cyclomatic Complexity Metric"?  I've
<found, for C code at least, that it does a very good job at finding
<error-prone portions of code.
<Applying some math from graph theory, you get a small
<integer number that "measures" complexity.  From experience, a number greater
<than 10 is usually worth investigating/testing/redesigning/whatever.

I've never heard of it. However, what I've found works best is:
1. Run a fresh listing.
2. Acquire some performance-enhancing drugs (coffee, Coke, Jolt Cola all work)
   from the local all-night 7-11.
3. Tune the radio to Brain Pain (Sunday nights on 90.3 for Washingtonians).
   Those poor souls outside of 90.3's EMI range might make do with
   Metal Church, Sanctuary, Queensryche, Slayer or Judas Priest. Close
   the windows so you don't frighten the neighbor's dog.
4. Get a red pen.
5. Simply *read* the listing. It's truly amazing the number of problems/bugs
   you find this way. It's also surprising how many programmers *never* read
   their code unless their looking for a bug or are enhancing it.
6. If you find a section that is incomprehensible, but you know what its
   supposed to do, X it out with the pen and rewrite it from scratch.
7. Be brave. Good code has been rebuilt from the ground up at least 3 times.
8. We doan' need no steenkin' program to discover complicated code. :-)