Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!spock!kim
From: kim@spock (Kim Letkeman)
Newsgroups: comp.object
Subject: Re: code blocks (aka closures)
Message-ID: <3835@kim>
Date: 9 Jul 90 13:13:38 GMT
References: <12396@june.cs.washington.edu> <1112@carol.fwi.uva.nl> <5319@stpstn.UUCP> <11013@alice.UUCP> <5339@stpstn.UUCP>
Organization: Mitel. Kanata (Ontario). Canada.
Lines: 40
In-reply-to: cox@stpstn.UUCP's message of 6 Jul 90 21:50:13 GMT

In article <5339@stpstn.UUCP>, cox@stpstn.UUCP (Brad Cox) writes:

| There *is* a silver bullet, and I believe that our competitors in
| the far east are using it already. Even though they're far behind in
| software technology today, they're *already* doing one to two orders
| of magnitude than we are in software defect rates (some companies
| report 0.008 defects per KSLOC, vs 1-3 defects/KSLOC typical, .01-.1
| for critical software, according to McGarry and Basili figures).
| Simplifying greatly, the difference seems to be that they're
| focusing on the *product* whereas we're focusing on the *process*;
| which is one way of phrasing the paradigm shift I'm referring to.

I'm partial to the data put forth by DeMarco and Lister that there is
a significant (order of magnitude+) difference between the output of
the best software designers versus the worst in terms of time required
to completion of a project and defect rate (and, one has to assume
long term maintainability.)  They carry it further and show that there
is approximately a 3x difference for those above the median versus
those below.

This would allow for another theory as to why our competitors in the
far east are doing very well in this area.  The information that I am
regularly fed by news services leads me to believe that they have a
rather competitive and selective society. Perhaps they simply have an
overall higher quality population of software design staff (more
talent, better training, whatever.) They may also not have our
designer ego problem - meaning that they may adhere more to
established practices and standards (using software IC equivalents?)
rather than forging a new direction every time the opportunity is
presented.

| I do admit to more than passing interest that we who view ourselves
| as 'the software development community' not discover that our
| consumers have done to us what they did to an automobile industry
| that proved more attuned to its own interests, rather than its
| consumers'.

A frightening thought.
-- 
Kim Letkeman    mitel!spock!kim@uunet.uu.net