Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!julius.cs.uiuc.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!aglew From: aglew@crhc.uiuc.edu (Andy Glew) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: The CPU with 3 brains---486 compatibility with 8008 Message-ID: Date: 12 Nov 90 19:37:02 GMT References: <1990Nov4.014901.23819@zoo.toronto.edu> <1990Nov6.223738.13265@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> <9333@b11.ingr.com>,<8658@scolex.sco.COM> <0093F8E9.2320FFA0@KING.ENG.UMD.EDU> Sender: news@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (News) Organization: Center for Reliable and High-Performance Computing University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign Lines: 17 In-Reply-To: sysmgr@KING.ENG.UMD.EDU's message of 11 Nov 90 19:22:57 GMT >Why is it faster to write programs in C than assembly? :-) I'll regret getting into this, but empirical studies of programmer productivity seem to show that programmers produce approximately the same number of lines of code[*] per day, irrespective of the language they program in. One C statement can be several assembly statements. The actual efficients you use in your estimates of time required vary a bit, but not too much. I used COCOMO the last time I was doing estimates. Is anybody still using COCOMO, or is it completely passe'? Can anyone provide us with some empirical COCOMO parameters for assembly versus C at some industrial site? [*] debugged code, including comments, in languages the programmers are familiar with. -- Andy Glew, a-glew@uiuc.edu [get ph nameserver from uxc.cso.uiuc.edu:net/qi]